THE BOOK OF 
FAMOUS SIEGES 

TUDOR JENK.S 





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BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 



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THE 
BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 



BY 



TUDOR JENKS 




ILLUSTRATED 



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INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, I909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, I909 



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" No fort so fensible, no wals so strong, 
But that continuall battery will rive, 
Or daily siege through dispurvayaunce long, 
And lacke of reskewes, will to parley drive." 

Spenser, Faery Queene, III, 10, x. 



^; 



PREFACE 

It is only in modern times that history has come 
to be anything more than a story of wars carried 
on between either rulers or peoples. In old times 
warfare was endless. Every people knew that its 
lives and its property were safe only so long as they 
could defend themselves from enemies that had no 
scruple to prevent them from killing or robbing all 
foreigners. 

The art of making war or of defending a coun- 
try against its enemies, therefore, was more im- 
portant than any other study. Success in war was 
the only path to greatness and the price paid for 
safety in the possession of land or property. When 
a people was overcome, its men were slain, its 
women and children carried into slavery, its homes 
destroyed or occupied by the conquerors, while its 
wealth became the plunder of its enemies. 

In this state of the world, every town was neces- 
sarily a fortress ever ready for attack; and the 
people living in it were the garrison who expected 
to defend it whenever enemies appeared. 

[vii] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

The earliest civilised peoples were those who had 
learned to support themselves by tilling the ground 
or by keeping flocks and herds, and these settled 
peoples had to have homes not too often changed. 
They were surrounded by other peoples, who were 
hunters and fishermen, or robbers who lived a 
wandering life and had no scruple in taking by 
force the property they coveted, and who were 
attracted by the wealth gathered and stored in set- 
tled places. To be civilised, a race had to fight for its 
home. So it came about that the first victories of 
civilisation over savagery consisted in being able 
to defend fortified places against attack. 

When there grew up a number of civilised na- 
tions, and these came into conflict through the 
jealousy or the ambition of their kings, the strug- 
gle to see which would overcome the other took 
two forms: the battles in the open field and the 
attacking and defending of fortresses, or walled 
towns. Histories tell us much less about the meth- 
ods of attacking and defending strongholds than 
about ordinary battles, and yet the story of sieges 
is certainly as important and in many ways is more 
interesting than the story of field warfare. 

In this book is told how great cities have been 
taken by able commanders. Out of the hundreds 

[ viii ] 



PREFACE 

of battlings for fortified towns, those have been 
selected which give a fair idea of the science and 
art employed in siege warfare from the earliest 
times to our own day. It will be found that each 
siege represents a somewhat different state of the 
art of war, and usually shows the methods of some 
great general when stoutly opposed by men not 
only brave, but skilled in defence, and determined 
to hold their own against him. 

After the early days, when accounts are some- 
what mythical, a glance is taken at the siege of 
Troy, mainly to show how little knowledge of the 
art of warfare was shown on either side, and then 
we consider the exploits of the Persians under 
Cyrus, of the Spartans against the Athenian allies 
at Platsea, of Alexander against Tyre, and so on, 
following the art of war as waged by Csesar, Titus, 
by the Saracens and the Crusaders, and the great 
commanders of more modern times down to the 
Japanese taking of Port Arthur, the most recent 
of great sieges. 

Although no more than a score of sieges are 
treated, yet these have been selected as types of the 
rest, and show clearly the various methods of tak- 
ing cities from the beginning of history to our own 
times. Another list might have been selected, or 

[ix] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

the number of sieges might have been easily dou- 
bled or quadrupled, but it is believed that those 
chosen are the best for the purpose. To treat of 
more would have made the accounts too brief. 

Whoever reads even so summary a sketch will see 
at what great cost the nations have preserved their 
civilisation or their nationality, and will learn that 
no age has been without its great leaders, its brave 
soldiers, and its devoted patriots. 

Tudor Jenks. 



CONTENTS 



Preface 



PAGE 

vii 



The First Period : 

A Siege in the Earliest Times 
The Siege of Troy 
The Siege of Babylon, 538 b.c. 
The Siege of Plataea, 429 b.c. 



14 

26 
38 

47 



The Second Period : 

Siege of Tyre, 327 b.c. . 
The Siege of Saguntum, 219 b.c. 
Siege of Syracuse, 214 b.c. 
Siege of Alesia, 52 b.c. . 
Jerusalem, 70 a.d. . 



66 

82 

89 

94 

111 



The Third Period : 

Constantinople about 717 a.d. 
Siege of Paris in 885 
Siege of Antioch, 1097 a.d. • 

[xi] 



137 
151 
160 



CONTENTS 



The Fourth Period : 

Siege of Orleans in 1428 

The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 

The Siege of Rhodes, 1522 . 



PAGE 

184 
202 
210 



The Fifth Period : 

The Siege of Gibraltar, 1783 
The Siege of Antwerp, 1832 . 
The Siege of Vicksburg, 1863 
The Siege of Paris, 1870 
The Siege of Port Arthur, 1904 



235 
247 
257 
275 

287 



[xii] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Catapult, in the Days of the Wars between 

Rome and Carthage .... Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Wooden Horse at the Siege of Troy . . 32 

Horatius Codes Defends the Bridge . . 44 

Alexander Captures Tyre 76 

Hannibal Crosses the Alps to Enter Italy . . 86 

Julius Csesar, the Conqueror of Gaul ... 98 

The Romans under Titus Attacking Jerusalem . 128 

A Battle against Besieging Normans . . .158 

An Army of Crusaders 160 

Joan of Arc Wounded before Orleans . . . 198 

The Turks Entering Constantinople . . . 208 

The Burning Ships before Gibraltar, 1783 . . 244 

General Grant, the Commander before Vicksburg . 264 

The Besieging of Vicksburg 272 

Japanese 11-inch Siege Gun Firing on Port Arthur . 292 

A Charge of Japanese Infantry under Fire . . 292 

General Baron Nogi, Commander of the Japanese 

Forces before Port Arthur .... 296 

[xiii] 



THE FIRST PERIOD 

Ancient Babylonia 
Siege of Troy 
Babylon, by Cyrus or Darius 
Plat.ea, by Archidamus 



[i] 

[2] 



THE TAKING OF CITIES 

ALL boys know the difference between a game 
/% of football as it was played in the old days 
JL JLi on many a school playground between two 
groups of boys chosen by leaders from their own 
schoolmates, and the same game as it is played to- 
day before thousands of deeply interested lookers- 
on by picked and trained teams from the great 
universities. And yet the object of the two games 
is not very different. In each case one party strug- 
gles to overcome another and to carry, or drive, a 
ball over the goal line. The difference between the 
two games consists simply in the fact that one is 
a mere struggle without any particular science, 
while the other is scientific from beginning to end. 
There is the same difference between the fight- 
ing of battles in the earliest days of the world, 
when two great bodies of men came together and 
struggled, each to overcome the other, and the 
battles of later times, when every part of the strug- 
gle was directed by the careful study of the science 
of warfare. Of course there is a certain interest in 

[3] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

every sort of a fight, whether we approve of it or 
not. This may come from the fact that mankind 
have always been fighting animals, or it may come 
from mere curiosity — the desire to see which side 
will win. But there is all the difference in the world 
between such an ignorant interest and the really 
scientific interest and pleasure gained from watch- 
ing a struggle in which skill, courage, learning, 
and genius are pitted against the same qualities in 
worthy enemies. 

An old Indian who was taking a party of young 
men upon a hunting expedition in the West was 
amused at their excitement over the sport. " Ugh! ,: 
he said grimly, "this is nothing; wait until you 
hunt men'' And we may say to those who find 
excitement in going over the strategy of the foot- 
ball field or in listening to accounts of brilliant 
plays, that these are " nothing ' : when compared 
with the great game of warfare wherein from the 
beginning of the world men have been forced to 
stake their lives and those of their wives and chil- 
dren upon the issue of their conflicts. 

There is no part of this great story of warfare 
that is not of thrilling interest, no branch of mili- 
tary science that may not be studied with delight 
as well as profit. But too often the issue of great 

[4] 



THE TAKING OF CITIES 

battles, the winning or losing of the victory, has 
turned upon mere accident or been decided by 
overwhelming force. Upon the battle-field, even 
Napoleon declared that God was on the side of 
the heaviest battalions, and Cromwell, to his pious 
motto, " Put your trust in God," added, " but keep 
your powder dry." 

There is, however, another branch of warfare 
which, when fully developed, became more purely 
a science. From the very earliest times, when war- 
fare was almost universal, men were forced to 
gather together for safety. They could not live far 
apart for fear of attack by wandering foemen. 
Consequently, not only did they build their homes 
near together, but they chose for such gatherings 
the places that aided them to beat off their ene- 
mies. They built their towns, which grew into cities, 
either upon high places easily defended, upon 
banks of rivers, upon pilings out in lakes, upon 
islands, or sometimes in thick forests, that they 
might be safe from attack, or if attacked, might 
most easily defend themselves. 

Hence it followed that, together with the art of 
fighting in the open, there grew up another art 
that had to do with the taking or defending of 
cities ; and since the attack and the defence of these 

[5] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

strongholds was usually a matter of considerable 
time, there came about a careful study of ways to 
repel an enemy or to overcome and capture places. 
This developed into a complete science in which 
certain leaders became expert, and what was learned 
in one age was handed down to the next, so that 
each generation learned what former ages could 
teach, and made inventions for themselves toward 
the perfecting of the science. 

The very name " siege " shows that the taking 
of cities was something which men went about 
with deliberation. The word means " a sitting 
down " before a place, so as to work out methods 
of overcoming it. The very earliest sieges were not, 
of course, complicated matters. There was a simple 
method adopted, which may be explained in a few 
words. 

The besieging forces, once they had gathered 
about the city of their enemies, forced their way 
directly through the fortifications, which seldom 
consisted of more than banks of earth, piles of 
logs, or logs driven upright and close together, 
making palisades. If the attacking army was 
strong enough to force its way through these, the 
struggle became a hand-to-hand conflict, much 
like an ordinary battle. If they could not in this 

[6] 



THE TAKING OF CITIES 

way carry the place, by " assault," as it is called, 
the only thing to do was to form a ring around 
the place and to wait until those inside were starved 
into submission. This sort of siege was not im- 
proved upon for many a long century, and it was 
in this way that the soldiers of by-gone ages, who 
were armed with spears, bows and arrows, slings, 
and swords, captured their enemies' cities and over- 
ran their lands. 

The first improvement in this sort of fighting 
came about in the early times, when the nations of 
the earth that possessed a civilisation greater than 
their neighbours were the Egyptians, the Syrians, 
the Assyrians, and Babylonians, and the other 
races around the shores of the Mediterranean. 
These peoples protected their cities mainly by 
great earthen or clay walls, by palisades, and by 
wide ditches or waterways. In order to overcome 
these obstacles, the besiegers of cities had to devise 
means of getting across the ditches or climbing 
over the walls, or of driving the defenders from 
important points in order that their own men 
might take them. Their artillery, so to speak, con- 
sisted of their archers and their slingers. In order 
to cross the moats, or ditches, they made use of 
rafts, inflated skins, or great bundles of reeds, or 

[7] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

of logs of wood. To surmount the walls they car- 
ried light ladders of ropes or of wood, to which 
they attached hooks or stones, so that they could 
be thrown to the top of the walls and would aid 
the soldiers in climbing to the top. 

It can be readily understood that the possession 
of such weapons and such methods of warfare did 
not give the besiegers power to take really strong 
cities, which were either by nature or by art thor- 
oughly fortified and defended by a force in any 
way equal to that of the outside enemy. Conse- 
quently, many of the early sieges lasted a great 
number of years and were decided only by the 
starvation of those within the fortified walls or by 
the arrival of an army from outside to drive away 
their foes. 

To starve out a garrison it was necessary not 
only to prevent provisions from reaching those 
within the city, but at the same time to support the 
army outside. In places where the soil was rich 
and crops could be readily raised, both parties 
might support themselves during a siege by grow- 
ing the food they needed. If the soil would not 
support the besieging army, it would have to 
bring its food and supplies from long distances, 
and this could be done only where the besieging 

[8] 



THE TAKING OF CITIES 

force was numerous enough to guard itself from 
attack and at the same time to send out strong 
parties to bring in supplies from the surrounding 
country. 

We shall not be able in one brief volume to de- 
scribe more than a few of the greatest sieges of 
history, and we shall select those which are most 
notable because of the importance of the places 
besieged, the warriors who attacked and defended 
them, or the interest of the plans and methods 
adopted by the besiegers and besieged. 



[9] 



THE FIRST PERIOD 

AS regards the science of warfare, the history 
Z_m of mankind may be roughly divided into 
JL- J^. five great periods, differing very greatly 
in length, it is true, but separated from one another 
by great changes in the methods of making war, 
due to improvements in the weapons used. 

So far as our subject, " The Taking of Cities," 
is concerned, the main thing which controls the 
carrying on of a siege and the defence is the ques- 
tion what men are able to throw. For the very idea 
of a siege supposes that one party is protected 
from being closely approached by the other. Al- 
though a siege may result in a hand-to-hand fight 
at one part or another of the fortification, this does 
not come about until after the wall of the fort 
has been broken through or thrown down, or until 
the outsiders, by climbing the walls or building 
up a structure as high as the wall, have brought 
themselves to the same level, and so may fight 
once more as if upon level ground. To keep the 
outsiders from throwing down the wall, breaking 

[10] 



THE FIRST PERIOD 

through it, or building up a structure that will 
bring them to its top, the main reliance is upon 
the use of missiles — artillery of one sort or an- 
other. 

Things may be thrown for two purposes, both 
by besiegers and besieged. One is to kill or drive 
away the enemy's soldiers and workmen, the other 
is to destroy the things built up for defence or for 
attack. For either purpose the enemies must get 
within range. If they have artillery (which name 
applies quite as much to the old-fashioned machines 
for throwing beams and stones or arrows as to 
modern guns) that will send projectiles to a very 
great distance, then they need not come near the 
enemy, and neither side can long remain exposed, 
that is, within range of the fire of the other. So 
it is that the nature of the weapons used has 
made great changes in the conditions of sieges, 
and these changes have brought about the five 
great kinds of fighting since the beginning of 
history. 

The first of these periods extends from the ear- 
liest times, about which we know only through 
carvings upon old tablets and monuments, down 
to the time when mechanical engines for throwing 
missiles were invented, it is said during the reign 

[in 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

of Dionysius of Syracuse, about four centuries 
before Christ. This date may not be certain, but 
at all events it has been handed down as about the 
time when these great machines were first put to 
use. 

Before this date armies could assail one another 
at a distance only by means of arrows and darts, 
or of stones flung by slingers. How long ago these 
weapons took the place of clubs and stone-throw- 
ing by hand we do not know, for they seem to 
have been in use further back than times of which 
we have any record. They may have been used ten 
thousand years ago, or even more. Of course, these 
small missiles would kill men and animals, but they 
could not destroy the lighter sort of fortifications 
nor pierce through breastworks, even though these 
were merely of light branches woven into basket- 
work supported by stakes. They could be often 
warded off also by light shields carried in men's 
hands, though now and then a strong slinger could 
succeed in making a masterly shot, such as that 
with which David slew Goliath. Yet, behind their 
shields, soldiers were able to advance close to any 
fortifications, and by means of ladders might force 
their way over them to a hand-to-hand fight. 

For the purpose of destroying the walls them- 

[12] 



THE FIRST PERIOD 

selves or the enemy's lighter fortifications, the 
ancients used principally the battering-ram, or a 
similar engine with a pointed head meant rather 
to pick a wall to pieces than to break it down. 
Such were the chief weapons used from the oldest 
Egyptian times down to the wars of Alexander 
the Great. 

From old carvings we see also that the ancient 
soldiers knew how to dig under walls and towers, 
either to undermine and overthrow them or to gain 
an entrance to a town by an underground passage. 
But though the carvings show how a city was 
taken, we cannot give the full story of any siege, 
and must content ourselves with a sort of general 
account that will give us an idea of the fighting 
about the walls of Nineveh, Samaria, Damascus, 
Kadesh, Calchemish, in the days of such old war- 
riors as Thotmes III — " the Alexander of Egypt ' : 
— of Rameses II, of Tiglath-Pileser III, of Gid- 
eon, and David. 

The stories of most of these early sieges must 
be much alike in general plan. 



[13] 



A SIEGE IN THE EARLIEST TIMES 

PERHAPS in a list of sieges the first that 
is worthy of attention is that of the siege 
of Babylon, which was taken something 
more than thirteen hundred years before Christ, or 
more than two hundred years before the siege of 
Troy (1184 B.C.) described by Homer. There is 
not much certainty in accounts of events going 
back so far as this, but this account describes the 
city as having been captured by King Ninus 
(which is a Greek name for the Assyrian King 
Tiglathi-Nin) and united with his own city, or 
country, of Nineveh. 

This great city, Babylon, had existed since be- 
fore the dawn of history, and at a later time is said to 
have been from forty to fifty miles in circumference, 
or to cover an area about as great as that covered 
by Philadelphia to-day. Within its great double 
walls, which are declared to have been three hun- 
dred feet in height and over eighty feet thick, was 
enclosed an area which consisted for the most part 
of gardens, parks, fields, and orchards. The streets 

[14] 



A SIEGE IN THE EARLIEST TIMES 

ran at right angles. Outside of the walls was a deep 
moat, dug when the clay was taken out for the 
walls themselves, and there were a hundred gates 
of brass and two hundred and fifty towers in the 
enclosing structure. It was rather a mighty fortress 
than a wall. The city was built on two sides of a 
river, and its halves were joined by a movable draw- 
bridge supported on stone piers. Within the city 
were great palaces, two at the ends of the bridge, 
the outsides of which were decorated with coloured 
bricks, an enormous temple, and other smaller 
ones; and the river Euphrates, which ran through 
the city, supplied a reservoir four miles square. 
The country round about was a great flat plain, 
divided by marshes, rivers, and artificial canals. 
Most of the travel was in big flatboats. 

Whether or not the siege of Babylon by Ninus 
was exactly like all other sieges of these ancient 
times we need not inquire; we know enough of the 
warfare of those days to be able to describe about 
what must have taken place. But it is probable 
that in these earliest days the walls of Babylon were 
nowhere near so high as they became when the 
city was at its strongest. Had the walls then been 
as high as three hundred feet, probably the city 
could not have been taken by an army like that 

[15] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

brought against it under King Ninus. The strong- 
est part of the army which King Ninus led con- 
sisted of a force of horsemen, which, far in ad- 
vance of the main body of his troops, rode over the 
level plains in order to protect the rest from sur- 
prises and to give timely warning of the presence 
of the enemy in case any outposts of the city should 
be met with. 

The coming of these cavalrymen would put to 
flight all the inhabitants of the country, who, in 
peaceable times, occupied the fields and villages 
of clay huts, thatched with rushes and branches, 
built here and there along the great network of 
canals and watercourses that made this plain, now 
a desert, one of the most fertile regions of the 
earth. We may be sure that the Babylonians had 
posted horsemen of their own miles from the city, 
in order that they might have early warning of 
the coming of the enemy. These outposts would be 
the first to arrive with news that the enemy's army 
was at hand. Riding at full speed over the plains, 
and dashing over the bridges, their horses lashed 
to the highest effort, they appeared at the bronze 
gates of the city, gave the password, and carried 
the warning to the commanders of the garrisons 
stationed in the many towers along the great wall. 

[16] 



A SIEGE IN THE EARLIEST TIMES 

Then would be lighted the beacons that, by their 
light at night, or smoke in the daytime, called the 
defenders of the city to arms. Hasty orders sent 
the bodies of archers and slingers to their posts 
on the broad top of the wall, which was wide 
enough for a number of chariots to drive abreast 
along its top. 

Meantime, following closely after the galloping 
scouts, came the country people, in much the same 
manner as, some seven hundred years later, they 
are described by Macaulay as thronging into the 
city of Rome when it was threatened by Lars Por- 
senna : 

A mile around the city 
A throng stopped up the ways; 
A fearful sight it was to see 
Through two long nights and days. 
For aged folk on crutches, 
And women great with child, 
And mothers sobbing over babes 
That clung to them and smiled, 
And sick men borne in litters 
High on the necks of slaves, 
And troops of sun-burned husbandmen 
With reaping-hooks and staves. 
And droves of mules and asses, 
Laden with skins of wine; 
[17] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

And endless flocks of goats and sheep, 
And endless herds of kine, 
And endless trains of waggons 
That creaked beneath the weight 
Of corn-sacks and of household goods 
Choked every roaring gate. 

Although Macaulay's lines refer to a time so 
many centuries later, there can be no doubt that, 
except that boats were more frequent than wag- 
gons, they paint a true picture of the flight of the 
dark-skinned country folk to the great strong- 
hold of Babylon before the advancing army of 
Ninus. 

When at length the enemy are within sight 
upon the flat plain, the brazen gates are shut fast, 
the outer drawbridges are drawn up or destroyed, 
the soldiers stand at their posts behind the breast- 
works on the edge of the wall, and the siege is 
begun. 

Having advanced to a place just out of range 
of the arrows and stones from the slings, the forces 
of King Ninus prepare their camp, spreading 
around the city upon all sides, making their camp- 
fires, putting up their tents of skins stretched upon 
branches, and settling themselves for a long siege. 
At once they begin building a wall of their own 

[18] 



A SIEGE IN THE EARLIEST TIMES 

to protect their camp from any sudden attack on 
the part of the Babylonians. They know that there 
are heavy forces of soldiers behind those enormous 
walls, and that if the sentinels upon the top of the 
walls can spy out weak places in the line of be- 
siegers, at any moment one of the great gates may 
be flung open and a column sent out to attack 
the weak point. If such attacks are made, it is 
but for the purpose of delaying the work of the 
besieging army, for it is too strong to be put to 
flight. 

The Babylonians know that their main strength 
is in keeping behind their walls and in making the 
work of the besiegers as difficult and as slow as 
possible. But though the work may be delayed, it 
cannot be stopped when the besiegers are so strong. 
The army outside has brought with it spades and 
hoes and other tools for digging, and gradually 
the soft clay and sand is dug out to make a ditch 
and then piled up into a wall high enough to 
shelter the soldiers from the arrows and the stones 
that might reach them, even though the range be 
a long one. 

This wall once completed, a more dangerous task 
must be undertaken. This is the building of a 
mound. The outside wall is really no more than a 

['19] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

protection for the besieging army, making it hard 
for the Babylonians to deliver attacks against 
them. 

The mound is the first means of attack. Having 
selected some part of the city wall which seems 
not so well defended or not so strong as the others, 
the soldiers of King Ninus bring baskets full of 
clay, which they empty over the front of their own 
wall, very much as modern labourers begin the 
building of a road across a valley. Load after load 
of the earth is poured over the edge, and gradually 
between the two walls a cross wall is built up, ex- 
tending from the outer wall and rising higher as 
it nears that of the city. 

During this work there is a fierce battle between 
the bowmen and the slingers on each side. Large 
forces of the Babylonians gather upon their own 
wall opposite the growing mound and discharge 
their arrows and the stones from the slings against 
the workmen who are carrying the earth that goes 
to building the mound. The outsiders in the same 
way do their best to protect their own men and 
to slay the Babylonians upon the walls. Every 
step in the building of the way between the two 
walls makes the danger greater, since, beginning 
almost out of range, the workers are forced, as 

[20] 



A SIEGE IN THE EARLIEST TIMES 

the mound lengthens, to encounter a hotter and 
hotter rain of missiles from the marksmen of 
the city. 

Although many of them wear an armour of 
metal rings or plates sewed to cloth, of quilted gar- 
ments or of leather, and, besides, protect themselves 
behind great wicker and leather shields, which are 
planted upon the mound as they advance, such a 
work cannot be carried on without great loss of 
life, a loss greater outside than within since the 
Babylonians have the advantage of fighting from 
a higher wall, thus shooting downward upon their 
enemies, and are protected by better fortifications. 
But owing to the fact that not many archers and 
slingers can find room at the point on the walls 
opposite which the mound is being built, the be- 
siegers, by constantly sending reinforcements, are 
able to carry the mound steadily forward until it 
actually reaches the wall of the city. 

They have selected for attack a point midway 
between two of the great towers along the city 
wall, so that they may, as far as possible, escape 
the missiles sent from these. Once having reached 
the walls, the workers are actually safer than be- 
fore, since the bowmen and slingers are forced to 
expose themselves over the edge of the wall in order 

[21] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

to fire straight downward, and thus offer them- 
selves as marks for the arrows and stones of the 
besiegers who shoot from along the mound. Hav- 
ing completed the cross wall between besiegers and 
besieged, there comes the problem of breaking 
down the city wall, or of climbing over it. Although 
only a narrow column of men can find footing upon 
the mound, yet there can be brought against them 
a force not very much greater. 

Probably the final attack will take place at 
night. This can hardly be a surprise, since great 
fires are kept lighted by the besieged along their 
own wall. But even the great fires can give but an 
uncertain light, and the work of the marksmen is 
made less deadly by the flickering flames and the 
dark shadows. 

When the column that has been formed for the 
assault has reached the city wall, the fiercest strug- 
gle of all takes place. Great beams of wood, cal- 
drons of boiling water, flaming pitch, stones — 
everything that is heavy — is brought to the edge 
of the wall and hurled down upon the soldiers be- 
low. Meanwhile, by means of long ladders, beams 
of wood, bundles of reeds, the mound is raised in 
height. Though the brave soldiers fighting their 
way slowly upward lose many of their number, 

[22] 



A SIEGE IN THE EARLIEST TIMES 

they are reinforced by fresh soldiers as fast as they 
fall. 

While the besiegers are thus making good their 
footing upon the wall, the Babylonians within are 
building breastworks across their own wall on each 
side of the point where the besiegers have gained 
a foothold, in order to prevent entrance to the city. 
Along the top of the wall begins a hand-to-hand 
fight, the besiegers trying to clear the defenders 
from its top, the defenders resisting stoutly every 
step in advance. But where the besieging army is 
the stronger and is able to gain complete posses- 
sion of a large portion of the wall, it is not long 
before they can tear this down, since it is always 
easier to destroy than to build up. Having thus 
broken a way into the city, they can more easily 
destroy any defences that may have been built 
behind the opening they have made, since these are 
usually much smaller and weaker than the wall 
already taken. In this way entrance to the city is 
gained, and the breach once made, the enemy once 
established within the walls, the advantage is upon 
their side, for the simple reason that they have 
what is called the interior line of defence — a phrase 
that requires a word of explanation. 

Imagine a small body of men attacked by a sur- 

[23] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

rounding crowd. Unless the odds are too great, 
this central body has the advantage of position, 
since it has a smaller surface to defend, a smaller 
distance to go to strengthen a weak point of the 
force. Suppose, for example, that the forces of 
King Ninus have broken their way into Babylon 
and are advancing through a gap in the wall. The 
force brought against them must surround them 
in order to stop their advance. They must occupy 
a wider space, and can less easily send more men 
to any weak point that needs reinforcement. Mean- 
while the attacking party are immensely strength- 
ened by their own bowmen and slingers, who, from 
the top of the captured wall, can rain missiles down 
upon the heads of the Babylonians who are resist- 
ing the advance of the besiegers. 

Nevertheless, there may be many a long and 
stubborn fight before the city is finally taken; but 
in these fights there is no great advantage on the 
part of the citizens as against their enemies, and 
if the attacking force is more numerous, the break- 
ing open of the wall and the entry of the troops 
from outside lead sooner or later to the downfall 
of the city. 

In battering down walls, attacking armies from 
the very earliest times, as we know from old stone 

[24] 



A SIEGE IN THE EARLIEST TIMES 

carvings, made great use of the battering-ram. 
This was a long, heavy log, often armed at the head 
with a heavy metal point, and hung from its mid- 
dle, so that it could be swung forward and back- 
ward, delivering at each swing a blow the force 
of which depended not only on the weight of the 
ram, but also was often greatly increased by 
bodies of soldiers, who lent all their strength to 
aid the swing of the instrument. Sometimes the 
rams were hung in a frame that was roofed over 
and protected at the sides, and these could be 
pushed forward upon wheels. After the mound 
had given a way for advancing the battering-ram, 
the thickest wall built of small bricks could not 
long sustain its battering blows. 

Such was the method of attacking the great 
cities that grew up in the vast plain where the 
story of civilised mankind begins. But in the next 
siege we shall see that even the little skill shown 
in taking these cities was not known to the early 
Greeks and the Trojans. 



[25] 



THE SIEGE OF TROY 

THE attack upon Troy, which is supposed 
to have taken place very nearly twelve cen- 
turies before the birth of Christ, is, without 
doubt, a less skilful example of the art of taking 
cities than were many that preceded it. Certainly, 
in the story as it is told by Homer, there seems 
to be little more military art used in taking the city 
than might have occurred to the minds of a crowd 
of small boys or African savages. 

It may be that there was more use of devices in 
taking the city than Homer cares to mention, or, 
rather, we should say, than are told of in the poem 
or series of poems that are attached to the name 
Homer. The object of these poems was to show the 
bravery and the skill in the fighting of certain 
leadeYs of the two forces. Both the poet and his 
audiences cared little or nothing about how the city 
was attacked, and cared a great deal to hear of 
the boasting speeches and personal combats with 
spear, shield, and sword, wherein the great fighters, 

[26] 



THE SIEGE OF TROY 

Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, and Paris, played 
the part of stage heroes. 

Next in interest to these personal fights came 
the stories of how gods and goddesses came down 
from the upper air to help one warrior or to trick 
another. The whole story of the ten years during 
which the Greek fleet was tied up along the shore 
and the Greek army was encamped upon the plain 
around the walled city, shows us, therefore, little 
except the quarrelling and fighting, the grief and 
joy, of the petty kings and chieftains upon whom 
both armies depended for success. Even in the 
method of their fighting there is nothing scientific; 
it is a matter only of which fighter is able to strike 
the hardest blows, or to throw his spear with most 
force, or to run away quickest when overcome — as 
no Greek warrior of those times ever hesitated to do. 

The American reader of the " Iliad " can hardly 
help noticing the strong likeness between the 
warfare carried on by Greeks and Trojans and 
that waged between the American Indian tribes 
at the time when the white men had but recently 
come to America. If there be an advantage, it is 
upon the side of the American Indians, in that 
there seems to us something more admirable in 
their silent fighting, their stoical bearing of wounds 

[27] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

and injuries, and their manful endurance of what- 
ever fate sent them. According to Homer, the 
Greeks shouted as they fought, to terrify the en- 
emy and to encourage their own side, and they 
burst into tears when hurt, and even yelled with 
agony when in pain. 

The honours to be gained in battle were alike in 
the two cases, as the Indian strove to take his 
enemy's scalp, and the Greek did his best to cap- 
ture his enemy's armour. As the Indian chief 
would ride out and challenge his bravest enemy to 
single combat, so did the Greek heroes, and in both 
cases the important movements of the battle were 
delayed until the question of strength of the two 
champions could be settled — a matter that really 
should have been of no importance. Imagine, if 
you please, a general of to-day challenging to 
single combat a general of an opposing army, while 
the troops gathered as if in a football field to see 
what would come of it! 

In the ten years during which the siege lasted 
it would seem that the Greek army was strong 
enough at least to maintain its place around the 
city in spite of the efforts of the Trojans to drive 
them away; and if the Greeks had known enough, 
there were many ways by which the Trojan wall 

[28] 



THE SIEGE OF TROY 

could have been breached or undermined and 
thrown down, or an opposing mound like that of 
the ancient Eastern warriors could have been car- 
ried to the walls, and the city thus captured. 

But although we read in Homer of the Greeks 
building a wall to protect their camp, there is no 
mention of any besieging work being carried 
toward the wall of the city itself. 

In the early part of the poem we have, in Book 
Third, Paris challenging Menelaus to single com- 
bat, and the duel following; in the next book is a 
battle between the armies, merely an undisciplined 
struggle of two bodies of armed men in the open. 
In the seventh book we see the Greeks building a 
wall about their camp, apparently for protection 
only, after the loss of the battle, since the Trojans 
are shown encamping on the field. Half way 
through the poem, in Book Twelfth, we find the 
Trojans, under Hector, trying to assault the Greek 
camp in turn. In this attack the enemy are 
unable to force their way across the ditch at the 
foot of the wall, and are compelled to descend 
from their chariots and attempt an attack on foot, 
the army having been divided into five bodies. 
Then the hero, Sarpedon, succeeds in breaking 
through the wall at one point, while Hector, throw- 

[29] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

ing an enormous stone against one of the gates, 
breaks it down, and the Trojans drive the Greeks 
from their camp and their ships. The only artillery 
they used, if we may call it so, is stone-throwing, 
and the enormous stone cast by Hector is the only 
missile that seems worthy to be thought of as an 
attempt at bombardment. 

But even in this book Homer gives more space 
to a marvellous portent, an eagle in the sky in con- 
flict with a snake, than to the operations that re- 
sulted in breaking through the Greeks' defensive 
wall. A few words, however, show us the Trojans 
trying to dig away the mounds of earth and to set 
fire to the beams that support the earthworks, while 
the Greeks, upon top of the intrenchments, shower 
the besiegers with darts and arrows. This fight, 
by the way, is said to have taken place in a snow- 
storm. 

In the midst of this busy scene the poet rep- 
resents his fighters as pausing now and again to 
deliver long operatic speeches. But perhaps, as in 
the opera, this touch is not meant to be realistic. 
The actual breach of the wall made by Sarpedon, 
the Trojan champion, was accomplished by the use 
of a lever, which pried apart the great stones, and 
in the actual passing of the wall there is a line to 

[30] 



THE SIEGE OF TROY 

show that the Trojans made use of ladders, or of 
some similar contrivance. 

The return of the Greeks to the battle is pre- 
ceded by a shower of stones and arrows from the 
Greek marksmen, and the career of the victorious 
Trojans is cut short by a strong body of Greeks 
who resist them under the command of the two 
A j axes. But the final repulse of the Trojans comes 
about through the downfall of Hector, struck by 
a stone thrown by Ajax. And again the Trojans 
betake themselves within the city, little or nothing 
having been accomplished by their sortie. 

Another attack of the Trojans is more success- 
ful in destroying the Greek wall, and the Trojans 
reach even the first line of the Greek ships, but 
are once more repulsed. Of course, like many other 
incidents about the city, this attack and repulse 
of the Trojan warriors is regarded as being 
brought about by the work of the gods, who inter- 
fered every moment to aid a friend or thwart an 
enemy. When the Trojans are pursued back to 
their walls and attempt to make a stand against the 
Greeks, Hector is frightened and caused to take 
refuge in the city by the appearance of the god 
Apollo. 

When once more the Greeks appear advancing 

[31] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

against the walls of the city at the very beginning 
of Book Twenty-second, we at last hear of what 
looks like a systematic method of attack, for Homer 
tells us how the Greek soldiers made their ad- 
vance under the protection of their shields. The 
old Greek temples were covered by a roof known 
as a " testudo," and probably from its resemblance 
to this roof, the method of protecting themselves 
by holding their shields over their heads is likewise 
called the testudo, a name that has survived to our 
own time in natural history, since it has been ap- 
plied to the tortoise, because his shell is formed of 
plates closely set together and therefore resem- 
bles the ancient roof -like structure of shields under 
which soldiers were accustomed to protect them- 
selves from arrows and other missiles in advancing 
against a besieged city. It is doubtful, however, 
whether the Greeks actually made the skilful join- 
ing of shields into a single roof over their heads that 
was afterward adopted by the Romans, and no 
doubt had been used by many other nations be- 
fore them. Homer's Greek line simply speaks of 
their resting their shields upon their shoulders, and 
he does not give us any reason to suppose that this 
was not done by each soldier singly. 

As to the final capture of the city, there are 

[32] 




The Wooden Horse at the Siege of Troy 



THE SIEGE OF TROY 

some authorities who are inclined to doubt the 
whole story of the great wooden horse, stating that 
it is only a poetical way of expressing the fact that 
the Greeks gained entrance into the city by treach- 
ery through the opening of a gate that was known 
as the " Horse " gate. It has been said, too, that 
the episode of the horse may come from a confused 
legend recording that a battering-ram was used — 
possibly with a horse's head. On the other hand, 
it does not seem likely that so peculiar a story, so 
full of detail, and connected closely with many 
other events handed down from antiquity, was 
entirely an invention. We may, if we choose, ac- 
cept it, and believe that a small body of sol- 
diers could have been concealed in a hollow image, 
a great horse, and once within the city, could have 
stolen out and opened the gates to their comrades, 
particularly at a time when the Trojans believed 
the siege to have been abandoned. It was natural 
that the close watch over the wall should be given 
up, that only a small body of men should be left 
at the gates, and that a body of men, once within 
the city, could have held their own against an at- 
tacking force around one or two of the gates until 
the return of the Greek army from the island Tene- 
dos, to which they had retired. 

[33] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Once within the city, the story of the siege is at 
an end; but from one or two incidents during the 
fight within the walls we may gather something 
about the structure and the strength of the de- 
fences. Thus, while the Greeks were trying to break 
into the Trojans' citadel, we are told, in the 
" iEneid," how a big tower on the top of the palace 
was loosened from its foundations and toppled 
down upon their heads by the work of one or 
two Trojans. As this is spoken of as a " lofty ' 
tower, from which the whole of Troy could be 
viewed, it was certainly looked upon as a main 
feature of the palace. We may, therefore, get some 
idea of the size and importance of the building 
when a " main feature " of it could in a short time, 
by the use of levers, be torn from its foundations 
and hurled down upon the attacking Greeks. 

Another incident of the same attack was the 
destruction, by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, of a 
great palace gate, which Pyrrhus beat from its 
fastenings, single-handed, wielding an axe. These 
events seem to point out that the buildings, the pal- 
ace, the citadel, the walls, were not of very massive 
construction. Probably they were built mainly of 
bricks, after the usual fashion in neighbouring 
parts of Asia, and partly of stone and woodwork. 

[34] 



THE SIEGE OF TROY 

Certainly if they had been of the massive masonry 
that investigators have found in some even more 
ancient cities, we should not hear of their destruc- 
tion under so feeble an attack. 

It will be seen by this brief account of the siege 
of Troy that it was of little importance from a 
military point of view. Its greatness consisted in 
its being made the subject of a great poem, and 
in its connection with the Grecian mythology — the 
most poetic and fascinating series of fairy stories, 
myths, legends, that the world has ever known. 

To the student of military affairs the righting 
around Troy seems crudeness itself. The main ob- 
ject of the campaign, the taking of the city, ap- 
pears to interest the two armies least of all the 
affairs that occupy their attention. Personal squab- 
bles, single combats, grand speeches, visions of 
gods and goddesses — of all these Homer tells us 
with a force, vigour, and simplicity no poet has 
since equalled. But a tribe of savages in Africa, to 
say nothing of the American Indians at their high- 
est point of development, would have used more 
effective means and more ingenuity in taking a for- 
tified place than can be found by a close reading 
of the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," or even of the 
" iEneid," where Virgil has continued Homer's 

[35] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

story. Nor is it easy to understand why this should 
have been so. 

The Greeks, at least, were as practical-minded 
as any people of the world. Their land was full of 
fortified places, their remote forefathers had built 
enormous structures, which seem massive to us 
who dig them up to-day. Yet, clever craftsmen 
as they were, they do not seem to have brought 
into use the devices for taking cities which had 
been known centuries before in Egypt and Baby- 
lonia, as we see them depicted upon temple walls, 
and also had been used in a land with which the 
Trojans must have been in communication — that 
is, in the regions around the Tigris and Euphrates, 
where Assyria and Babylon were situated. 

In the next great sieges of which history tells us, 
some five or six centuries later, there is at least 
some science shown in the taking and defending 
of cities and forts. In fact, as we have already 
pointed out, the Greeks and Trojans were far more 
unskilful in these matters than were the great 
races in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt many years 
before their times. The old carvings show that 
these people knew how to use the battering-ram, 
how to undermine walls, how to build great mounds 

[36] 



THE SIEGE OF TROY 

of earth up to the city walls, and also how to meet 
these different kinds of attacks. 

Our Bible has many references to show that the 
Jews had learned these arts from their neighbours, 
and, like them, knew how to fight with slings, ar- 
rows, rams, ladders, and other weapons. But there 
is no need to do more than refer to this, since the 
arts of those early times remained unchanged and 
were employed by later generals. We shall return, 
then, to the city of Babylon, and tell of its taking 
by the Persians under Cyrus or one of his generals. 



[37] 



THE SIEGE OF BABYLON, 538 B.C. 

IF we were to tell about the siege of Babylon 
by Cyrus only those facts which wise men of 
to-day are willing to accept, the story would 
be a brief one indeed. More than five hundred years 
before Christ this siege took place, and those were 
not days of exact history. The accounts that come 
to us were largely mixed with fables and with bits 
of stories gathered from tradition. Which are true 
and which false, there is nothing to show. 

That the city was taken by the Persians there 
is ample evidence ; probably the general way of tak- 
ing is correctly stated, though some say that it was 
another than Cyrus who used the plan; and the 
little anecdotes of his doings at the time may or 
may not be true. 

The story of his early life is not unlike that of 
Romulus or of CEdipus — the grandson of a king 
ordered to be left exposed to die because of a 
prophecy that he should take his grandfather's 
throne. Cyrus was brought up by a shepherd or 
herdsman, and only in manhood came back to 

[38] 



THE SIEGE OF BABYLON 

the court. He became king 559 B.C., and was still 
a young man when, in command of the Persians, 
he set forth to conquer the mighty fortress-city, 
Babylon, then ruled by King Belshazzar. 

It is difficult for us to determine just how lofty 
were the walls and how strong the defences of 
this ancient city. Instead of telling us accurately 
about such matters, the older historians tell how 
Cyrus, while on the march toward the city, arrives 
at a little river, and is aroused to a mighty wrath 
against it, because one of his sacred white horses 
is drowned in crossing the stream. Like an angry 
child, the Persian king vows that the river shall 
no more run, and sets his great army to digging 
three hundred and sixty canals into which he drains 
the river, leaving its bed dry. 

Arriving at Babylon in the spring of the year, 
he fights a cavalry battle with the Babylonian out- 
posts, who soon retreat within the walls, close the 
gates, and settle down inside, confident that no 
human power could overcome their defences, which 
were now at their full height, and probably far 
stronger than when Ninus took the city. 

When Cyrus's army was drawn up around the 
enormous circuit of the widespread city, it looked 
so small as to excite the derision of the Babyloni- 

[39] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

ans, gazing indifferently upon it from the battle- 
ments of their lofty walls. And apparently they 
were justified. The ordinary way of taking cities 
at that time was to build a mound high enough 
to raise the besiegers to a level with the top of 
the walls. Now and then, if wood was plentiful, 
great towers were used instead of lofty mounds. 
To destroy these mounds, or towers, the besieged 
people would dig great mines below them, that the 
structures might fall in; or, when besiegers were 
ready to climb over the walls, they were met with 
boiling water, burning oil, or pitch, while showers 
of stones and arrows came from both sides and 
were received upon great shields. If the mound or 
tower could not be destroyed, at least the besieged 
could build towers of their own opposite the threat- 
ened points, and could raise these as fast as the 
besiegers raised theirs. 

The walls of Babylon, as we have already noted, 
are said to have been upward of three hundred 
feet high, at the very least, and we can understand 
the amused smile with which the Babylonian aris- 
tocrats looked down upon the feeble Persian force 
that crept, ant-like, along the great flat plains 
far below them. Cyrus, however, was not such 
a commander as those against whom the Baby- 

[40] 



THE SIEGE OF BABYLON 

lonians had fought before. He had with him the 
most valuable military engine in the world — a 
bright and ingenious brain — -and he soon suc- 
ceeded by strategy where force might have been 
despised. 

When cities could not be taken, the commanders 
were accustomed to blockade — that is, to build 
ramparts around on every side, and then, encamp- 
ing, to wait until the provisions inside the city were 
consumed and starvation delivered the inhabitants 
into their hands. The Babylonians judged by what 
they saw that Cyrus had adopted this plan, for as 
they took their usual outings in their chariots upon 
the broad driveway along the walls they could see 
the busy Persians digging a ditch around their 
city and throwing the earth into an embankment on 
its farther side. 

This, to the Babylonian gentlemen, was an even 
greater joke than the first arrival of their foes, for 
every well-informed citizen knew that in the gran- 
aries and reservoirs of the great city were stored 
sufficient food and supplies to support the whole 
city for twenty years. There was something very 
amusing in imagining the young Persian, Cyrus, 
passing the time from his early youth to middle 
manhood in picknicking on the plains around the 

[41] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

walls of Babylon, while the citizens went about their 
daily affairs as little disturbed as if swarms of ants 
were raising ant-hills out there upon the great 
plains far below. 

It was really a popular recreation to take note 
of the doings of the Persians, who, as Xenophon 
tells us, next built tall towers (which must have 
seemed like pygmies, viewed from the lofty walls 
above) here and there along their ramparts. These 
were set upon the trunks of tall palm-trees, ap- 
parently as if upon stilts, for it is said that Cyrus 
wished the Babylonians to believe that they meant 
to provide against sorties. Really the purpose of 
these towers was far different. It may be that 
Cyrus's plan was suggested by his foolish anger 
against the little river he had crossed. At all events, 
when the Babylonians had begun to lose interest 
in the Persians' puny fortresses, and had returned 
to their daily round of business and amusement, 
Cyrus took the occasion of a great feasting and 
banquet within the city to connect his long trench 
by short canals with the river Euphrates. Through 
these little canals the waters of the river were led 
away into the long trench or, as Herodotus says, 
into a great reservoir that had been dug by a 
former queen of Babylon, and hour by hour its 

[42] 



THE SIEGE OF BABYLON 

depth was decreased. When the waters were suffi- 
ciently lowered, so that the Persians could walk in 
its bed, Cyrus sent a strong force along the course 
of the river until they came to where it entered 
beneath great gates in the walls into the heart of 
the city of Babylon. 

In order to distract the attention of the guards, 
Cyrus had ordered a feigned assault to be made 
here and there against the walls or gates, and while 
these attacks were being repulsed, the forces that 
he had sent along the bed of the river succeeded in 
forcing their way into the centre of the city. As 
I have said, it was a time of feasting and merry- 
making. The Babylonians were taken completely 
unawares, were unarmed, many of them no doubt 
had drunk too much, and in a few hours Cyrus had 
seized the strong citadels and was in possession of 
the city. Here is the story as Herodotus tells it: 
" The Persians, who had been left for the purpose 
at Babylon by the river-side, entered the stream, 
which had now sunk so as to reach up to about mid- 
way of a man's thigh, and thus got into the town. 
Had the Babylonians been apprised of what Cyrus 
was about, or had they noticed their danger, they 
would not have allowed the entrance of the Per- 
sians within the city, which was what ruined them 

[43] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

utterly, but would have made fast all the street- 
gates which gave upon the river, and mounting 
upon the walls along both sides of the stream, would 
so have caught the enemy, as it were, in a trap. But, 
as it was, the Persians came upon them by sur- 
prise, and so took the city. Owing to the vast size 
of the place, the inhabitants of the central part 
(as the residents at Babylon declared), long after 
the outer portions of the town were taken, knew 
nothing of what had chanced; but as they were 
engaged in a festival, continued dancing and 
revelling until they learned the capture but too 
certainly." 

The capture of a great city by a trick, or rather 
by shrewdness against stupidity, shows how an- 
cient sieges were often determined by simple hap- 
penings. Though Xenophon tells us that Cyrus 
had catapults (arrow-throwing machines) carried 
on camels, this is doubtful. Another historian, 
Ctesias, tells of wooden dummies being put on the 
walls of the city Sardis when it was besieged by 
Cyrus. But there seems to have been no general 
practice of digging mines or of regular attacks in 
these old times. In fact, much of this early history 
is " a mass of fables." The story of the prophet 

[ 44] 




.2 






o 

o 

U 

O 

a 



THE SIEGE OF BABYLON 

Daniel, and of the writing on the wall, is familiar 
to us all; and there is little doubt that it was this 
taking of Babylon that followed ' Belshazzar's 
Feast." 

To about the same time belong the taking of 
Rome by Porsenna (508 B.C.), when Horatius kept 
the bridge, though (it is now believed) the Romans 
could not keep the city. We read of a siege of 
Barca, a year later, where Herodotus tells how a 
copper-worker detected the enemy's attempts to 
dig under the walls by using a metal shield as a 
sounding-board. Putting his ear to the shield, laid 
flat on the ground, he could hear the miners be- 
neath, and thus the mines were discovered. This 
seems to show mining was not entirely unknown in 
these days. 

About twenty years later Coriolanus, the Roman 
general, gained his name by the taking of Corioli, 
which he did by driving back a sally of the enemy, 
and following them so fiercely as to enter the gate 
with them, as Plutarch tells us. Thus a city was 
taken, but it is agreed by the authorities that there 
was little real skill in the art of besieging until 
after the " Peloponnesian War ,: in Greece, and 
this war really began with the trouble over the 
city of Platsea, which was taken by the Spartans 

[45] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

about one hundred years after Cyrus's exploit at 
Babylon. 

Artillery, or machines for throwing arrows and 
stones, came into general use first in this war of the 
Grecian states, but later than this earliest siege. 



[46] 



THE SIEGE OF PLAT^A, 429 B.C. 

IN the history of Greece there were two great 
leading parties. At the head of one stood the 
state of Sparta, while the other was led by 
the Athenians. The jealousy between these two 
powers led at last to the long contest known as the 
Peloponnesian War. In the state of Boeotia was 
the city of Platsea, the only one of its state that 
was friendly to the Athenians. 

Secretly three hundred Thebans, allies of Sparta, 
gained admission to the city one night, and march- 
ing to its public square summoned the Platseans 
to give up their alliance with Athens and to join 
with them on the Spartan, or Lacedsemonian, side. 
When the Platseans discovered how small a body 
of Thebans were in the city, they captured more 
than half of the invaders and put them to death, 
in spite, the Thebans said, of a promise to spare 
their lives. This was the immediate cause of the 
outbreak of the war. A great army collected under 
Archidamus, the Spartan king, and entering 
Attica, ravaged it far and wide, burning towns, 

[47] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

destroying crops, and carrying off what they could 
not destroy. Meanwhile, the Athenians remained 
behind their walls in Athens, refusing to risk a 
battle. The Spartans did not attempt to assault 
Athens, the walls of which were high and strong. 

This was the first campaign, and the second was 
carried on in the same way. But during the second 
campaign the Athenian forces captured Mitylene, 
killed over a thousand nobles, threw down the 
walls of the city, and sent colonists who were 
friendly to the Athenians to occupy its lands. 
Meanwhile, the Spartan forces, united with the 
Thebans, had attacked Platsea, laying waste in 
their march all the country round about. Then the 
forces encamped before the walls and sent heralds 
to summon the city to surrender. 

The Platasans begged for time to consult the 
Athenian leaders, and a truce was granted. But 
soon word was received that the Athenians insisted 
that Plataea should remain true to the alliance, so 
there was no choice but to stand the siege. So cruelly 
was the war waged on both sides that the Platseans 
did not dare announce their decision to hold out 
except from the top of the walls; and as soon as 
surrender was refused, the besiegers began their 
work against the city. 

[48] 



THE SIEGE OF PLAT^EA 

They cut down all the trees for a wide space 
round about, and built a palisade on all sides of 
the city to keep the Plataeans from escaping. Then 
they began to throw up an enormous mound to 
bring them on a level with the top of the walls. 
This mound was built of wood, stones, and earth, 
and its sides are said to have been protected by a 
sort of wooden lattice-work of interwoven trees and 
branches, to keep the sides from falling outward. 
Upon this work the men laboured night and day, 
in relays, and it was completed in seventy days — 
that is, it was built up to the walls and made the 
same height. 

But one difficulty in raising a mound against 
a city lies in the fact that it gives warning to those 
inside of the exact point to be attacked, and the 
Platseans raised their wall by building up a struc- 
ture of logs opposite the end of the mound and 
backing this wooden breastwork with bricks taken 
from the houses nearby. The front of it was, as 
usual, covered with rawhides, so that it might not 
be set on fire by thrown torches and flaming darts. 

So far the advantage was on the side of the 
Platseans, since they had plenty of material within 
the walls to raise their breastwork as fast as the 
mound was built up, and they could annoy the be- 

[49] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

siegers from the walls by shooting down upon them, 
while less exposed to arrows than were the work- 
men outside. 

Also, from behind their walls the Platseans dug 
an underground mine leading to the front of the 
mound, and as fast as the mound was raised they 
dug the ground away from beneath. The loose stuff 
of which the mound was built fell away rapidly 
into the opening below and so the secret mine was 
discovered. To prevent the ruin of the mound the 
engineers of the besiegers filled in the hole with 
wattles — that is, with branches woven together, 
which kept the earth solid. The Platseans, however, 
carried their mine still farther than the head of the 
mound, and continued to dig it away from below 
as it was built up above. 

The next step by the besiegers was to set up their 
engines against the wall, and by bringing a heavy 
battering-ram to bear, they soon succeeded in break- 
ing it through at one point, only to discover that 
the Platseans had prepared for this by building 
inside the breach a second wall, in half -moon shape 
— what has since been called a " demilune " or half- 
moon — so that after the wall was broken through 
it was impossible for foes to enter the town without 
undergoing a terrific fire of stones and arrows and 

[50] 



THE SIEGE OF PLATJEA 

a rain of all sorts of missiles from the new inner 
wall, while forcing that also. 

Other rams were set to work at different parts 
of the wall, but some were caught in nooses and 
pulled aside, others broken by means of great tim- 
bers, which were slung by chains from each end 
and supported by poles thrust over the walls. By 
raising these great timbers and letting them fall 
again, some of the rams were broken. These devices 
were not new, but were known even to the ancient 
Egyptians and Assyrians. 

By this time the besiegers had made up their 
minds that the city was not to be easily taken, and 
consequently decided that the place must be starved 
into submission. Since the siege had been expected 
by the Platgeans, they had long ago prepared for 
it by rilling the city with provisions, by sending 
away all except the fighting-men — four hundred 
Platasans and eighty Athenians — with a hundred 
and ten women to bake bread. 

The Spartans decided to build something 
stronger than the palisades around the city, so that 
a smaller force might keep the Platseans in, and 
they built two long walls, protected inside and out 
by a ditch. This was to resist any sally by the 
Platasans and at the same time to prevent their 

[51] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

being rescued by an Athenian attack from without. 
Their two walls were sixteen feet apart, and at in- 
tervals were towers extending clear across from 
wall to wall. Here and there were huts to protect 
the soldiers. 

These long walls were built of bricks, and when 
they were finished, the besiegers thought they 
could safely send away half of their force. But be- 
fore giving up the attempt to take the city by 
storm, they made one last attempt. Bringing great 
fagots of dried branches, they tumbled these, one 
night, into the space between the mound and the 
wall, poured sulphur and pitch over them, and 
when all was ready, set fire to the great pile. 

Undoubtedly this fire might have destroyed the 
wooden barriers which the Platasans had built, for 
it was far too fierce for them to extinguish. The 
historian Thucydides says that it was the great- 
est fire ever seen " save where forests are en- 
kindled by the rubbing together of branches." But 
during that night came a great thunderstorm 
which extinguished the flames. 

This attempt having failed, and the most of the 
force having marched away, there came a lull in 
the siege, while the besiegers waited for the pro- 
visions in the town to be exhausted. Too feeble to 

[52] 



THE SIEGE OF PLAT^A 

make an open attack, the Platseans became so re- 
duced by famine that at last more than half of 
them decided upon attempting to escape secretly 
from the place, so as to leave more food for the 
rest. In order to climb over the besiegers' walls, it 
was necessary to make scaling-ladders, and the first 
question to be settled was how long these should be. 

We get a good idea of the simplicity and lack 
of science of the soldiers of the time when we learn 
how they decided as to the height of the besiegers' 
walls. They sent to the battlements a great num- 
ber of Platseans to count how many bricks there 
were from top to bottom. This they could do, 
Thucydides tells us, because the wall on the side 
toward the city " had not been thoroughly white- 
washed." When the men had reported how many 
bricks they had counted, the leaders took the report 
of the majority and then worked out from this, 
by a simple sum in multiplication, the height of 
the wall. 

The scaling-ladders being made of the right 
length, the two hundred and twenty-two Platseans 
who had decided to attempt an escape, waited for 
a dark and stormy night, when they knew that the 
sentinels on the besiegers' walls would retire to the 
towers for shelter. Then, keeping some distance 

[53.1 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

apart from one another so that their weapons might 
not clash, and having only the left foot shod to pre- 
vent slipping in the mire, the Platamns lowered 
themselves from their own wall, crossed the space 
between, erected their ladders, and climbed to the 
top of the besiegers' wall. The leading party of 
Plataeans were armed with daggers and spears, and 
were followed by a number of archers. 

Climbing quietly to the top of the wall in the 
rain and darkness, a number of them had gained 
the top when the usual awkward soldier knocked 
down a tile and its clatter aroused the enemy. An 
outcry was followed by the rush of armed guards 
from the towers to man the whole wall. But the 
Platseans, as soon as they had gained the top had 
seized the towers to right and to left of the place 
where they were crossing, and were able, by station- 
ing a strong force of archers in each, to keep back 
the besiegers. 

As it had been arranged, so soon as the attempt 
had been discovered, the Platgeans inside the town 
made a pretended assault against the walls of the 
besiegers, and in the darkness it was impossible to 
tell which attacks were real and which were feigned. 

While the besiegers were thus in uncertainty, the 
escaping Platseans had all succeeded in reaching the 

[54] 



THE SIEGE OF PLAT.EA 

top of the outer side of the Spartan wall, and those 
who had already crossed ranged themselves on the 
farther side of the outer ditch, from which they 
were able to direct their fire against the besiegers 
who tried to regain the captured wall. As the 
Spartans carried torches, and the Platgeans were 
in darkness, the latter fought at a great ad- 
vantage, and their archers slew many of the Lace- 
daemonians. When the three hundred reserve troops 
of the besiegers had found out where the real at- 
tempt to break out was being made, and had ar- 
rived to prevent the crossing, they found they had 
come too late and could only shoot into the darkness 
toward where they supposed the escaping Platgeans 
to be marching. 

It had been arranged among the besiegers that if 
an attempt to break out should be made, certain 
signals should be displayed by lighting torches ; but 
the Platgeans very cleverly lighted many torches of 
their own in different parts of the wall so as to con- 
fuse the signals that were meant to bring help to 
the Spartans. 

As soon as a force could be got together, it pur- 
sued the escaping Platgeans, but these having at 
first taken the road toward Thebes — that is, toward 
their enemies* country (rightly believing that this 

[55] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

was the last direction they would be expected to 
take) — were able to get a good start, and then to 
turn back toward the mountainous country, where 
all trace of them was lost. 

Of the two hundred and twenty, all but eight 
escaped, a few having turned back while yet be- 
tween the walls, and one unfortunate archer having 
been captured just at the outer ditch. 

In the morning, the Platseans, who had been told 
by the few who returned that the attempt had been 
an utter failure and all were captured, begged for 
a truce " to bury the bodies of their friends " — a 
request that must have angered the besiegers, and 
that led to the discovery of their friends' successful 
escape. 

As for those left within the city, they were soon 
brought to terms. An assault against the city being 
tried was so weakly met as to prove a second might 
easily be successful. But, as a matter of politics, the 
assault was not made, for a very curious reason. 
The besiegers did not wish to take the city by storm 
when once they were sure of it. Looking forward 
to a time when peace should be made, they wished 
to be able to say that the Platseans had " sur- 
rendered " of their own free will. So they persuad- 
ed the Platseans to let them enter the city and to 

[56] 



THE SIEGE OF PLAT.EA 

submit the question of surrendering to certain men 
sent from Sparta. As it was impossible to refuse, 
the Platseans agreed to the terms. 

Then followed a sort of mock trial, consisting 
really of long political speeches on both sides, which 
resulted in the putting to death of nearly all the 
garrison, and the selling into slavery of the unfor- 
tunate women who had been retained in the city to 
bake the soldiers' bread. 

Within a year afterward the whole city was de- 
stroyed and the materials used to build a great 
caravansary and a temple to the goddess Hera, or 
Juno. The siege of Plataea thus ended with the es- 
cape of half its defenders and the death of the rest. 
As an example of the art of war, it at least shows 
a great advance in military devices over the aimless 
righting about Troy, proving that the Greeks had 
gained during the centuries some notion of how 
cities might be taken. The struggle had lasted for 
two years, and is looked upon as the first really 
methodical siege. 

Here were regular walls, towers, and battle- 
ments, to keep the besieged from escaping, and also 
a second line of the same defences to keep aid from 
reaching them. It was the first " circumvallation." 
Then, too, the besiegers used the mound and as- 

[57] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

saults; and there was mining to destroy siege- 
works, with the building of towers within to meet 
towers outside, and the making of a second wall to 
defend a breach made in the first. 

There was science shown on both sides. 



[58] 



THE SECOND PERIOD 

Siege of Tyre, by Alexander 
Siege of Saguntum, by Hannibal 
Siege of Syracuse, by Marcellus 
Siege of Alesia, by C&sar 
Siege of Jerusalem, by Titus 



[59] 
[60] 



THE SECOND PERIOD 

WHETHER or not the heavy artillery 
that preceded gunpowder was invent- 
ed in Syracuse, we may date the inven- 
tion somewhere near the time of Dionysius the 
Tyrant, of that city, and with the contriving of this 
class of machines a complete change was brought 
about in the art of besieging strongholds. Probably 
the first idea of sending a heavier missile than the 
ordinary arrow or stone from a sling, was to build 
up a large crossbow much stronger than any man 
could pull by his unaided strength. When such a 
bow was set upon a frame and provided with a little 
windlass by which it could be drawn back, it became 
possible to shoot very long and very heavy bolts and 
arrows, and these would go much farther and more 
swiftly than one fired from the hand bow. The ar- 
rows were laid in a channeled trough. 

The next step would be to adapt the same ma- 
chine to the firing of stones instead of arrows — 
a very simple matter, as it required only the put- 
ting of a flat block at the middle of the bowstring, 

[61] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

so that when the bow was released the block would 
strike the stone and shoot it out of the trough. This 
heavy-artillery bow was the beginning of the com- 
plicated machines of the same kind that afterward 
were built to an enormous size and fired great 
beams or stones heavy enough to batter down a 
fortification. Of these an account will be given 
later. 

The bow having been developed and magnified, 
some genius must have seen that it was possible to 
make a big sling upon the same principle — that is, 
to have a very large sling worked by machinery, 
instead of a small sling used by hand. The machine 
for throwing stones based upon this idea consisted 
of a heavy and long beam of wood carrying the 
sling at one end, the long end, and being heavily 
weighted at the other. This beam being set up upon 
a pivot, when drawn back down to the ground 
would raise the heavy weighted end. Then a stone 
having been put in the sling while the lighter end 
was fastened down, the beam was suddenly re- 
leased, the heavy weight descended, carrying the 
long end through a wide arc, and throwing the 
stone out of the sling to an enormous distance. 
These, too, were improved greatly at a later date. 

This ancient artillery was made to throw light 

[62] 



THE SECOND PERIOD 

stones of ten pounds or less, darts, or great boulders 
as much as three hundred pounds in weight. Of 
course they were frequently used to attack one an- 
other — that is to say, when an enemy's catapult be- 
came troublesome it would often be destroyed by 
bringing a number to bear upon it and shooting it 
to pieces, if possible. One very unpleasant use made 
of these throwing machines was that of hurling into 
a city dead bodies, or compounds that were poison- 
ous or ill-smelling, so as to cause disease. There 
were countless forms of this ancient artillery, and 
the names given to the various devices are most 
confusing, since the old authors were not always 
careful to use the same names for the same sorts. 

It must be remembered that from several cen- 
turies before Christ down to the seventeenth cen- 
tury, these predecessors of cannon were in constant 
use, and that clever men were ever engaged in im- 
proving them and making them more effective. 
Their effect upon sieges was to bring about the 
building of much stronger and loftier walls, but at 
the same time it was not at all impossible for a 
builder who had plenty of time and money to make 
a wall strong enough to resist them. 

As these machines could easily be made of im- 
mense size and would throw to great distances 

[63] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

stones of a weight great enough to batter down all 
but the heaviest fortifications, no longer were sol- 
diers' shields or light breastworks built of wood able 
to resist such heavy missiles. Consequently attacks 
upon fortified places had either to be carried on 
from a greater distance, or when the besiegers ap- 
proached they had to protect themselves by heavy 
banks of earth or strongly framed breastworks of 
logs that would resist the missiles from the heavy 
artillery. Heavy towers, or breastworks, were cov- 
ered with earth or great mattresses to break the 
force of blows, and also provided with an outer 
covering of rawhides, which would not take fire; 
for it was as easy to throw great masses of burn- 
ing stuff as to throw heavy rocks or beams of wood. 

Since these engines of war could be constructed 
wherever timber could be found or could be taken 
apart and transported on waggons, light fortifica- 
tions would no longer resist an army provided with 
such weapons. So city walls had to be made both 
higher and stronger, and light outworks were of 
little use except for a short time, since they could 
soon be battered to pieces by the enemy's artillery. 

It resulted from the use of these engines of war 
that sieges became more scientific and better pre- 
pared, but were seldom attempted except by a 

[64] 



THE SECOND PERIOD 

strong force well supplied with artillery and en- 
gineers. 

Alexander the Great, of Macedonia, is said to 
have had portable catapults — that is, he carried the 
metal parts, and fitted them with the necessary 
beams and cords. The machines of this sort were 
thought to be of Syrian or Phoenician invention, 
and in the next siege we shall see Alexander using 
them against the city of Tyre, the richest and old- 
est of Phoenician ports. 



[65] 



SIEGE OF TYRE, 327 B.C. 

IT will be as well to begin the story of Alex- 
ander's taking the city of Tyre by admitting 
that, from the modern point of view, there is 
little or no excuse for the exploits of the Macedon- 
ian conqueror. Even his admirers admit he had no 
other purpose than to extend his power as widely 
as possible, though he seems to have made the ex- 
cuse that he wished to extend Greek civilisation. 
Having made himself master of Macedonia and the 
neighbouring regions, having discovered the power 
of his soldiery to overcome less trained armies, 
Alexander simply extended his conquests farther 
and farther as he learned others' weakness and his 
own strength. 

As a boy, Alexander complained that his father 
would leave him nothing great to do. Taught by 
his mother to think himself a descendant of Achilles, 
coming to the throne at a time when his kingdom 
was full of revolt, Alexander was trained to warfare 
from the beginning, and had placed in his hands, 
by the death of his father, the best organised army 

[66] 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

then in the world. He was but twenty years old 
when he took the throne, and at twenty-two had 
already won great victories against barbarians and 
Greeks. He was no older when, at the head of thir- 
ty-five thousand men, he invaded Asia, defeating 
at the Granicus River a great Persian army, that 
left all Asia Minor in his hands. The next year he 
defeated six hundred thousand Persians, the army 
of King Darius. 

It was at this time that he turned southward to 
attack Phoenicia, for the Phoenicians were the great 
naval power of the world, and Alexander did not 
dare march into Asia leaving behind him Phoeni- 
cian fleets that might aid his enemies at home or cut 
off his own retreat. Of the Phoenician cities the 
greatest and richest was Tyre — the mother city of 
Carthage, which began as one of its colonies. The 
grandeur, the pride, and the power of this city 
can be best understood by reading in the Bible 
the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, where the 
prophet most poetically sets forth the city's mag- 
nificence in predicting its fall. 

There had been really two cities of Tyre, the old 
and the new ; one upon the mainland, the other upon 
a small island some two miles long, across a strait 
half a mile in width. The old city had resisted the 

[67] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

attack of Nebuchadnezzar for thirty years, but had 
finally been destroyed. New Tyre, the island city, 
was surrounded on all sides by lofty walls built of 
squared stones set firmly in gypsum, magnificent 
fortifications of masonry with lofty towers. To the 
north and south of the island were two harbors, one 
looking toward its sister city, Sidon, the other to- 
ward its daughter city, Carthage. In these harbors, 
upon the approach of Alexander, the Phoenician 
fleet was sheltered — a fleet of galleys with masts 
and sails, but also rowed by from three to five banks 
of oars. 

Alexander had with him no fleet when he first 
approached the city, and was compelled to make an 
attack by land. The old city of Tyre had been aban- 
doned, and the Tyrians had sent their women and 
children and their old men for the most part for 
shelter in Carthage, so that the new town was 
strongly garrisoned by some thirty thousand effec- 
tive men, was amply provisioned, and its people 
did not for a moment believe that Alexander 
could take the place. When his heralds arrived to 
demand Tyre's surrender, they were carried to the 
lofty walls that faced the shore and thrown into the 
sea, in wanton insult to the Macedonian army. 

The first step in the siege was to construct a 

[68] 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

great mole, or causeway, so that Alexander could 
bring his army from the shore to the island. This, of 
course, was begun out of range of the engines from 
the walls. To construct the mole, Alexander used 
the materials of the abandoned city — first driving 
piles of cedar from the forests of Lebanon deep 
into the bottom of the strait, and building up the 
work with wood, stone, and earth, with which, to 
give firmness, he had mingled rushes. Much of the 
hardest work was done by the inhabitants of the 
country round about, whom Alexander's soldiers 
gathered together and forced to labor at its con- 
struction. At the task of building the mole, Alex- 
ander's men worked day and night, while their 
general encouraged the best workers by large pres- 
ents, and, as was his custom, oversaw every detail 
in person. Along the edges of this mole the waves 
of the Mediterranean dashed, and to keep it from 
being washed away, the Macedonians felled great 
trees, with which they made a barrier along its 
whole length as a breakwater. 

So soon as the growing causeway approached 
within range of the walls of Tyre, the Tyrian en- 
gineers set up great machines for throwing darts 
and stones, and posted their skilful archers and 
spearmen thickly along the battlements, so that the 

[69] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

soldiers found their work more and more perilous 
the further it proceeded. They were protected by 
great shields and by " mantelets," or rolling breast- 
works made of logs framed together ; but every now 
and then some workman would expose himself and 
be picked off by the Tyrian marksmen. To meet 
these attacks, Alexander was forced to erect two 
great wooden towers at the outward end of the 
mole, and to station upon them his own engineers 
and archers, to oppose the fire of the besieged by 
shooting those who fired from the walls. 

Meanwhile the Tyrian fleets came boldly out 
from the harbors, knowing that there was no navy 
to oppose them, and, advancing toward the sides of 
the mole, poured a heavy fire upon Alexander's sol- 
diers and workmen. When the towers were finished, 
a battle waged fiercely between Macedonians and 
Tyrians for days, the mole meanwhile growing 
slowly. The front of the towers had to be protected 
by rawhides, for from their walls the Tyrian en- 
gines flung cauldrons of burning pitch and masses 
of flaming tow. 

When they saw that the towers could not thus be 
destroyed, the Tyrians prepared in one of their har- 
bours a great flatboat such as they used in transport- 
ing animals. This had two masts upon it, from the 

[70] 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

yards of which they hung caldrons filled with pitch 
or bitumen, and perhaps sulphur and other com- 
bustibles. The whole boat was then loaded with 
dried wood well soaked with oil and bitumen, and 
when all was ready, two of the triremes, or ships of 
war, one on each side, towed the flaming ship out 
of the harbour. Bringing it close to the towers at 
the head of the mole, they set it adrift in such a way 
that the winds and waves carried it against the 
causeway. The back of the fireboat had been so 
loaded that the prow was raised high in the air, and 
it ran up on the side of the mole and stuck fast. A 
few brave Tyrian sailors now set fire to the great 
mass of wood and sprang into the sea, to swim back 
to their friends. 

Alexander and his soldiers rushed to extinguish 
the flames, but at the same moment the Tyrians 
gathered upon the walls, sending volleys of missiles 
against them, and, despite the Macedonians' ef- 
forts, the great towers caught fire, and after a sin- 
gle hour most of the mole was destroyed. 

Thus failed Alexander's first attempt; and we 
can imagine the rejoicing of the Tyrians as they 
yelled with triumph, gazing over the smoking ruins 
from their lofty walls. They had taken some few 
Macedonians prisoners, and these they tortured and 

[71] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

put to death in full sight of their companions, toss- 
ing the bodies into the sea. This desecration of the 
bodies was to the Macedonians the greatest of 
all insults, since to them, as to the Greeks, the 
burial of the dead was a matter of supreme impor- 
tance. 

By his failure and the insults of the Tyrians, 
Alexander was driven to mightier efforts. Leaving 
his able engineers and clever workmen to build a 
broader, bigger mole, Alexander departed for Sidon 
to get together a fleet and to summon more soldiers 
to his assistance. While the work upon the mole 
proceeded, Alexander collected at first eighty, and 
finally a fleet of over two hundred vessels, and he 
was also joined by four thousand Greeks under Ole- 
ander. In command of this great force, Alexander 
returned to the siege. Having captured a few of 
the Tyrian vessels that had ventured too far from 
the harbours, he drove all the rest of his enemy's 
ships from the seas. They were drawn up in the 
harbour, with their prows toward the entrance, and 
across the entrance to the harbour the Tyrians 
stretched a great chain. Then Alexander's fleet was 
moored along the shore on both sides of his mole, 
ready to attack if the enemy's naval force came 
out. 

[72] 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

Having thus guarded against interference by 
the Tyrians, Alexander's men built many great 
catapults. These they placed upon flatboats and 
upon slower vessels of his fleet, and upon the mole 
itself. Other vessels were provided with lofty tow- 
ers, or with battering-rams, and two of them carried 
great bridges hinged to the decks and drawn up 
against their masts ready to be dropped upon the 
Tyrian walls when a breach should be made in 
them. 

In order to repulse the coming attack, the Tyri- 
ans erected many wooden towers on top of their 
stone walls, and from these discharged great vol- 
leys of arrows and flaming firepots against any of 
the Macedonian vessels that approached. As the 
Tyrian walls were a hundred and fifty feet high, 
little could be done until they were broken through 
at some point, and when Alexander's fleet advanced 
to the attack and drove their rams against the walls, 
and lowered men with crowbars and hammers to 
break the foundations, it was discovered that the 
base of the great wall was protected by an enor- 
mous mass of loose boulders against which the rams 
had no effect, and which could not be removed ex- 
cept a few at a time under the fire of the enemy. 
But the greater the difficulty, the more fiercely the 

[73] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Macedonians conducted the attack. Alexander's 
engineers prepared great flatboats and had them 
guarded by triremes, which are said to have been 
mail-clad — that is, protected either by metal or by 
leather and ropes against the fire from the walls. 
These boats were tied to the mole, and from their 
decks divers were sent to attach nooses to the loose 
stones, so they could be hauled up and deposited in 
the flatboats, by which they were carried out to 
sea. 

From the Tyrian walls were thrust long poles 
with hooked knives to cut the ropes that fastened 
the flatboats. Then Alexander sent some of his ves- 
sels to guard these ropes, but still the ropes were 
severed by Tyrian divers, who, probably by hidden 
ways, swam out from beneath the walls with knives 
in their hands. At length Alexander was forced to 
moor his boats with chains, and then gradually suc- 
ceeded in removing the loose stones from the base 
of a part of the wall. 

One of the causes that made the Tyrians hold out 
so bravely was the hope that they would get help 
from Carthage, which owed them everything for 
past favours. But both Carthaginians and Tyrians 
were Semites, keen in trading, shrewd in commerce, 
but lacking in generosity, though brave and skil- 

[74] 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

ful when driven into a corner. There was in the race 
little sympathy with their fellows, and throughout 
Tyre's great extremity, the Carthaginians remained 
idle spectators of its ruin. 

The next attempt of the Tyrians to interfere 
with the siege consisted of a naval attack. Across 
the narrow mouth of the harbour they stretched 
many sails, as if to dry them, thus hiding their fleet 
from the Macedonians. Behind this screen thirteen 
of their strongest vessels were loaded with soldiers, 
and one day, at noon, suddenly withdrawing the 
screen of sails, these dashed out of the harbour, 
driven at full speed by their rowers, and attacked 
Alexander's vessels that were drawn up to protect 
the side of the mole. 

It is said that Alexander was doing the classic 
equivalent for enjoying his lunch, or else was pass- 
ing the hot time of the day in Oriental fashion by 
taking a nap. At all events, things went badly for 
the Macedonian fleet, which lost many men and 
was in a fair way to be captured. Learning of this 
sudden outbreak, Alexander showed, as one of the 
writers says, the qualities of an admiral in repelling 
it. Hastily preparing for action a number of his 
own vessels, he dashed at full speed around the 
whole island on which Tyre stood. Though he was 

[75] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

in full view of the Tyrians on the walls, so busy 
were the vessels in plying their attack, that they 
had no warning of the coming vengeance until the 
rescuing Macedonian fleet appeared, to cut them 
off from the mouth of their harbour, attacking them 
in the rear. Out of the thirteen Tyrian vessels two 
were captured and a number of others severely 
damaged, making their escape with the greatest 
difficulty. 

Alexander had no desire to be interrupted again 
during the lunch hour by similar naval imper- 
tinence, so he stationed enough of his own vessels 
before the mouths of the Tyrian harbours to make 
certain that their vessels would no longer interfere 
with the besiegers' work. 

By this time the mole had come close enough to 
the wall so that the battering-rams could be swung 
to and fro to deliver their shattering blows; but 
against the solidly cemented ramparts of Tyre, the 
rams proved nearly useless. Now that he had a fleet 
while the Tyrian fleet was bottled up, Alexander 
was able to attack the wall even at other parts than 
those reached by his mole, and, sending his war- 
vessels close up to the city, he tested the strength of 
its walls upon all sides. 

It is said that there is always a weakest link in a 

[76] 




1) 



u 

s-l 

g 

X 

< 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

chain. At Tyre this was found on the seaward side 
of the fortification. Taking it for granted that they 
would always be able to rely upon their fleet, the 
walls were either thinner or weaker toward the sea. 
Here the armies succeeded in cracking, dislodging, 
and removing stones until a breach in the wall was 
made. Two vessels had been held ready to lower 
bridges into the opening as soon as made, and now 
these were rowed or pushed forward, the bridges 
were dropped, and the heavily armed Macedonian 
soldiers advanced with lance and sword behind their 
shields to clear the way for the besiegers. But the 
Tyrians had gathered in such numbers behind the 
breached wall and poured upon the attacking party 
so fierce a volley of stones, arrows, burning pitch, 
and balls of flaming tow, that Alexander's men 
were driven back, while behind the breach the Tyri- 
ans built a second wall, curved into a half -moon, 
that for the time closed the gap. 

Then came an interval of three days during 
which both sides were making ready for the grand 
assault. Alexander brought together all his batter- 
ing-rams opposite the weakened wall, sent both his 
fleets to break the chains at the mouth of the Tyrian 
harbours, and at an appointed time the whole 
Macedonian force was let loose at once upon the 

[77] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

city. All the engines at once began flinging heavy 
stones and great timbers against the walls, while 
the Macedonian fleets rammed and broke the chains, 
entered the harbours, and attacked the Tyrian 
vessels. The old breach was widened, the bridges 
once more lowered from the floating boats, and 
Alexander's chosen men in close array fought their 
way to the walls and gained their top. Then, sepa- 
rating into two parties, they marched along the top 
of the walls, taking in turn each tower as they came 
to it. The attacking fleet also succeeded in reaching 
the walls of the harbour side, put up great ladders 
by which the soldiers climbed to the top of the walls, 
and in a short time the Tyrians were driven back 
from their defences, retreated to the centre of the 
city, and made their last stand around one of their 
temples. 

According to the old fashion, Alexander led his 
men in person, and after taking the citadel and re- 
forming his guards, attacked the Tyrians in their 
streets. They were no match for the Macedonians in 
hand-to-hand fighting, and the Macedonians were 
wild with rage to avenge the torture and killing of 
the captives. In a short time eight thousand Tyrians 
were put to death, and two thousand were nailed 
upon crosses. 

[78] 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

To show how unequal was the fighting in the 
streets, we may note the statement that only twenty 
of the shield-bearing Macedonians were slain. The 
whole loss of Alexander in taking the place was 
about four hundred killed and three or four thou- 
sand wounded, a greater loss than Grant suffered 
in taking Vicksburg. 

Before taking the city, Alexander had had a 
dream that Hercules had stretched his hand out 
over the walls to welcome him to the city. Perhaps 
for this reason he pardoned all those who had taken 
refuge in the temple of Hercules, while slaying or 
selling into captivity all the rest, some thirty thou- 
sand. To celebrate his triumph, Alexander sacri- 
ficed to Hercules before his temple, making a sacred 
offering of the great engine that had first breached 
the wall, and then held a grand naval review and 
parade of his forces, celebrating games and sports 
before the temple. 

So, after seven months, fell this city, believed to 
be unconquerable. The site of the island city to-day 
is occupied by a small and unimportant town, with 
a few thousand inhabitants. But the great mole, to 
build which " exhausted a city and a forest," still 
exists, and has caused a change in the tides about 
the city that has made the harbours fill up, thus 

[79] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

destroying not only the city itself, but those very 
advantages that made its site valuable. 

Gossiping Plutarch tells us that the boy Alex- 
ander was wasteful in throwing incense upon the 
sacrificial fires, and that his tutor rebuked him, tell- 
ing him to wait until he had conquered the lands 
where incense was made before being so lavish. Af- 
ter Tyre was taken, Alexander found among the 
spoils great stores of frankincense, and sent a great 
quantity of it to his tutor with the message, " This 
will teach you never to be niggardly with the 
gods!" 

It is important to remember that Alexander was 
helped in his warfare by the cleverness of the Greek 
engineers, and that they had learned from the ear- 
lier nations the secrets of siegecraft. Alexander's 
exploits were so celebrated that they were known 
throughout the civilised world, and no doubt the 
story of his sieges and the means used by him for 
taking cities were entirely familiar to the Cartha- 
ginians and also to their great rivals, the Romans. 
Thus, probably, the art of warfare was handed 
down from nation to nation until it came to 
Rome. 

The next siege, that of Saguntum, was what 

[80] 



SIEGE OF TYRE 

brought about the great Punic wars and led to the 
ruin of Rome's great rival on the south, across the 
Mediterranean. It is an interesting siege, also, be- 
cause Saguntum was founded upon a rock, and 
could be attacked from only one side. 



[81] 



THE SIEGE OF SAGUNTUM, 219 B.C. 

SOME of those who have written about great 
generals in the past have put the Cartha- 
ginian general, Hannibal, among the three 
greatest, the other two being Cassar and Napoleon. 
But such an estimate is based upon their general 
character as great men. Considered simply as sol- 
diers, Frederick the Great of Prussia and Gustavus 
Adolphus of Sweden are certainly the equals of 
any who ever lived, Frederick being often put at 
the head of the list. Hannibal, however, exceeds all 
the rest (according to these same writers) in his un- 
selfish and patriotic character. He fought for the 
good of his country, and never put his own interests 
against those of his nation. 

It happens, owing to the sort of wars that he 
fought, that Hannibal did not conduct any very 
great siege. This was because he was fighting with 
a not very large army against a great number of 
foes and in the enemy's country. He did not have 
time or sufficient force to settle down before a 
stronghold and to take it by siege. He was, there- 
in ] 



THE SIEGE OF SAGUNTUM 

fore, much less skilled in this form of warfare than 
either Alexander or Csesar. The only siege of im- 
portance that he carried on was against the forti- 
fied city, Saguntum, upon the eastern coast of 
Spain. 

The city at the time was only one mile inland, 
though now the coast has so extended that its site 
is three miles from the sea. It was situated upon an 
enormous rock, the sides of which were cliffs three 
hundred or four hundred feet high, except on the 
westward, where the slope was more gentle. To pro- 
vide against attack at this, its weakest point, great 
walls had been built there and a very strong and 
high tower. Although in those days the usual plan 
for attacking such strongholds was to build such a 
great mound of earth as that Alexander used in 
reaching the walls of Tyre, this could not be done 
against Saguntum, since the rock was too high and 
the mound could not be brought as high as the 
walls. 

Hannibal was therefore compelled to cut down 
hundreds of trees and to build the long galleries of 
strong walls that were called " vineae." These, cov- 
ered on the top with hides or earth, were like over- 
ground tunnels, and through them his soldiers could 
safely advance against the westward side near to 

[83] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

the walls. Out of wood also Hannibal's engineers 
built great towers and battering-rams covered with 
roofs. The towers were placed upon rollers and 
gradually moved forward until they came so near 
to the walls that the archers and slingers could at- 
tack the defenders from above. This kept the sol- 
diers of Saguntum from rushing out to capture or 
to set on fire the rams, which are said to have been 
of enormous size. The Saguntines at first drove the 
Carthaginians from the rams by their volleys, but 
as soon as the men were protected and the rams 
could beat against the walls, these soon began 
to yield. Hannibal succeeded at last in throwing 
down part of the wall and three of its smaller 
towers. 

The Saguntines had plenty of stores, were ex- 
cellent fighters and, being the last town in Spain 
to resist Hannibal, they hoped that if they could 
hold out a reasonable time help would come to them 
from the Romans. 

Hannibal had a hundred and fifty thousand men, 
and was well provided with siege machines, but he 
wished to take the city as soon as possible; and so, 
upon the making of the first breach in the walls, 
he ordered a charge without waiting to widen 
the breach and gain a broader front of attack. His 

[84] 



THE SIEGE OF SAGUNTUM 

men, consequently, fought at a disadvantage and 
were again and again driven back with great loss. 
Their great numbers were of no advantage, since 
they could advance only in a narrow column. The 
Saguntines, encouraged by their success, constantly 
rushed out to attack the siege-works, and at one 
time succeeded in wounding Hannibal in the thigh, 
so disabling him that he had to give up the active 
direction of the attack. Once before this, Hannibal 
had narrowly escaped being crushed under an enor- 
mous stone thrown from the wall. 

In these attacks the Saguntines made great use 
of blazing darts, called " falerica." Probably these 
were first made to set fire to the siege-works, but 
they proved most effective also when used against 
Hannibal's soldiers. For five days these assaults were 
repeated at intervals, but the Carthaginians could 
not force their way into the city. In spite of his 
hurry, Hannibal was compelled to see that the city 
could not be taken with a rush. He left the main 
works in the hands of his engineers, who first built 
a long breastwork protected by towers across the 
western front of the city, behind which the Car- 
thaginians were safe from attack. 

Then, at their leisure, the engineers constructed 
enormously high towers of many stories, upon each 

[85] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

of which were strong bodies of archers, slingers, 
and engineers with their artillery. 

When this lofty tower had been brought within 
bow-shot of the wall of Saguntum, so heavy a fire 
was poured down upon the defenders that they 
could not remain upon the upper part of the wall, 
but were forced to leave it undefended. This left 
the pioneers free to advance close to the foot of 
the wall, which was built of stones laid, not in mor- 
tar, but in clay. With picks and levers the base of 
the wall was soon weakened and the wall thrown 
down. 

But, meanwhile, the Saguntines had had time to 
build a half -moon wall inside to protect the breach. 
This, however, was a weaker wall than the first, and 
being commanded by the tower, could not easily 
be strengthened. Another breach was soon opened 
in another part of the wall, and having a strong 
force, the Carthaginians were able to prevent these 
breaches being closed. After several such breaches 
had been made, a strong force of Carthaginians be- 
ing sent at once to attack each, could not be re- 
pulsed, and the Saguntines were forced to flee from 
the wall and to take refuge in their strong citadel, 
or great tower. 

By the time Hannibal returned in person to the 

[86] 




Hannibal Crosses the Alps to Enter Italy 



THE SIEGE OF SAGUNTUM 

attack, the defence seemed so hopeless that he of- 
fered the citizens fair terms if they would sur- 
render. But refusing to give up, the Saguntines 
gathered all the wealth of their city into one great 
pile, set fire to it, and slew themselves. When, at 
length, the great tower of the citadel was in turn 
undermined and fell the Carthaginian army en- 
tered only to find the place a mass of ruins. This 
siege lasted for eight months, and despite the at- 
tempt to destroy the city's wealth, there was enough 
booty found in the city and sent to Carthage to 
make the avaricious Carthaginians eager to see the 
war carried by Hannibal into Italy. 

Five years later occurred the remarkable siege 
of Syracuse by the Romans under Marcellus. This 
is mainly remarkable for the wonderful feats in 
engineering that are told of as the work of the 
great Archimedes, a native of that city. But un- 
fortunately we do not know exactly the nature 
of the machines used by the philosopher. He was 
more interested in pure reasoning than in the clever 
things he made, and so we have no means of know- 
ing more than history tells us — that he destroyed 
and drove away the Roman ships. 

Suppose it was by means of explosives that 

[87] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Archimedes set them afire or raised them in the 
air — would not the story read much as it does 
now? 

At all events, the siege may be briefly told, 
though we cannot make clear all its happenings. 



[88] 



SIEGE OF SYRACUSE, 214 B.C. 

IN Plutarch's life of Marcellus we read of the 
great siege of the city of Syracuse in the year 
214 B.C. This was a fight of a navy against 
a strongly fortified seaport with lofty walls, assisted 
at the same time by a land attack. Marcellus had 
sixty great galleys, and plenty of the artillery of 
the time for throwing arrows and stones. He 
chained eight galleys together to support one huge 
engine, trusting that its heavy fire would destroy 
the wall. 

Archimedes, the great philosopher, a kinsman of 
King Hiero of Syracuse, was begged to lend his 
aid against the Romans, and used his skill to help 
the Syracusans in making and handling their artil- 
lery. He is said to have shot great timbers into the 
Roman ships, and so sunk them; to have caught 
some of them by their prows with great hooks and 
raised the bows till they went down stern foremost ; 
to have hoisted others into the air, whirled them 
about, and dropped them on the rocks, and so forth. 

As for the great engine on eight galleys, it was 

[89] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

first struck with a mighty stone weighing more than 
a thousand pounds ; then a second, and a third — and 
it went to pieces. Marcellus gave up the attack. 

Next he tried to dash close to the walls, thinking 
Archimedes's machines only good at a distance. But 
the old philosopher had made others for short 
range, and the Romans were again quickly repulsed 
by showers of stones, volleys of arrows, and so many 
missiles that they lost not only men but ships. 

Marcellus, seeing that the brain of Archimedes 
had inspired all the Syracusans, tried to shame the 
Romans to the attack, but they were in a panic, 
and shied at seeing a rope or bit of timber on the 
walls. He had, therefore, to give up any idea of as- 
saulting, and rely upon a blockade. Marcellus took 
a prisoner whom the Syracusans were eager to 
ransom, and while consulting with them about this, 
Marcellus noted that a certain tower was ill 
guarded. Providing scaling-ladders of the right 
length, an attack was made while the citizens were 
keeping a feast to Diana. The Romans gained the 
wall, and then by boldness and noise put the Syra- 
cusans into a panic, and so came into possession of 
the city. 

Archimedes, it is said, was ordered to come before 
Marcellus, and being in a brown study, told the 

[90] 



SIEGE OF SYRACUSE 

Roman soldier to wait till he finished a geometry 
problem; whereupon the soldier, not being inter- 
ested in mathematics, drew his sword and bisected 
the philosopher. 

The burning of the Roman fleet by mirrors or 
lenses is not told of in several of the best authorities, 
but experiments have been made to show that 
curved mirrors might have sent the sun's rays in a 
concentrated beam, and so have set fire to light 
wood not too distant. 

The long struggle between Rome and Carthage 
saw a number of greater and lesser battles against 
cities, but there can be little said of these since they 
do not give us new light on methods of warfare. 

Were it not for the fact that it is also desired to 
choose in this book sieges not too near one another 
in time, the siege of Carthage by Scipio in 147 B.C. 
should be told. But it was not a contest in which 
the conditions were at all equal. The Carthaginians 
had been deprived of everything with which they 
could make war. Their ships were burned, their mil- 
itary engines carried away or broken up, even their 
very weapons demanded by the Romans. Yet when 
the Roman conquerors demanded the destruction of 
the city, the Carthaginians refused, in utter despair 
of any mercy, and worked in a frenzy to defend 

[91] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

themselves, the Carthaginian women even giving 
their long hair to be twisted into bowstrings. That 
the city should fall was inevitable, but the defence, 
though most heroic, was rather that of a great horde 
of citizens fighting desperately against overwhelm- 
ing odds, than a fair struggle between armies. Al- 
together, it is rather a story of cruelty and horror 
than of scientific warfare. 

Of a very different type is the campaign of Caesar 
in Gaul. Although the Gauls had not so much 
science in war as the Romans, yet they were a brave 
and heroic people, they had an enormous advantage 
in numbers, and it required Rome's greatest cap- 
tain and her best engineers to take their palisaded 
cities. 

Caesar took several Gallic cities by sieges, as most 
schoolboys are forced to know in reading his Com- 
mentaries. The most noted of these sieges were those 
of Avaricum, a city amid marshes, and Alesia. 
Avaricum was taken by a great mound and enor- 
mous towers. The Gauls here fought Caesar in 
towers like his own; they undermined his mound; 
they caught in nooses the hooks with which the Ro- 
mans tried to tear down their ramparts; they 
scorned death, as is shown by the incident of four 
or more Gauls being shot in succession as they stood 

[92] 



SIEGE OF SYRACUSE 

in a breach throwing fire against the Roman works. 
Caesar tells this incident with admiration, and it 
shows the accuracy with which the Roman engineers 
plied the scorpio, or machine-bow. Finally Caesar 
took the wall by assault and captured the town. 

The siege of Alesia was carried on with even more 
science and against a far greater force, both within 
and without the city, and it is of this siege that we 
shall next tell. 



[93] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA, 52 B.C. 

ABOUT 52 B.C., a year or two after Julius 
L\ Cassar had made his first expedition into 
-*■ "•>• Britain (which, by the way, was a com- 
plete failure as a military enterprise), there was a 
great uprising of the Gauls under their leader, Ver- 
cingetorix. In this campaign the Gauls determined 
to adopt a new method of warfare. Hitherto they 
had tried to withstand the Roman soldiers at every 
point. Now, under the advice of their able leaders 
they resolved to give up the smaller places, which 
were difficult to defend, to select two or three of the 
largest towns, put all their forces within these 
strongholds, strengthen their fortifications as much 
as possible, and to hold them to the last against the 
Roman armies. 

Three strong cities were chosen. The first, 
Avaricum (now Bourges) was taken without much 
difficulty; but the second, Gergovia, the capital of 
the Arverni, which was the name of the people over 
whom Vercingetorix ruled, made so good a re- 

[94] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

sistance that the Gauls were greatly encouraged, 
and many who had before submitted took up arms 
and joined Vercingetorix and his forces. Caesar 
found that the entire nation was in arms against 
him. The final struggle between Romans and Gauls 
took place around the city, Alesia, which was situ- 
ated upon a hill well surrounded with fortifications 
and garrisoned with more than a hundred thousand 
men. This hill was a steep slope on all sides, and in 
some places it was precipitous. On each side, at 
the bottom of the hill ran two rivers. The historian, 
Froude, tells us that the position was so strong that 
it could not be taken except by starving out the gar- 
rison. The modern town, which is built near the site 
of the ancient town, is known as Alise St. Heine. 
Against this position Caesar, having joined with his 
lieutenant, Labienus, led his whole force, expecting 
to blockade the Gauls within the town, to cut off 
all supplies, to starve them into surrender, and then 
having captured the leader of the insurrection to- 
gether with his whole army, to put an end to the 
rebellion. 

Caesar himself in his history of the campaign de- 
clares that the only way of taking the town was 
by a blockade. All about the place were hills divided 
from the town site by the valley rivers. Not only 

[95] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

was the fortified place full of Gauls, but a large 
force was encamped on a plain three miles long, 
to the eastward of the city at the foot of the hills. 
These men had thrown up an intrenchment and 
dug a ditch to serve as a first defence against the 
Romans. 

Having arrived before the city, Caesar began the 
siege by throwing up intrenchments, intending to 
surround Alesia upon all sides, and here and there 
behind this wall he built a number of camps in the 
Roman fashion, each one really a little fortress. 
Also to strengthen the line, the Romans built 
twenty-three towers, each one holding a strong gar- 
rison and guarded by vigilant sentinels. 

We must not think of these fortresses and walls 
as being built of masonry. They were constructed 
of logs of wood, or, rather, trunks of trees, pinned 
firmly together by great stakes and banked up by 
piles of earth. Towers and strongholds were built 
in the same fashion as log houses, except that the 
walls were usually doubled and filled in with earth 
and stones, rammed tightly so as to strengthen the 
wooden walls. Against even the small cannon of the 
Middle Ages these defences would have been use- 
less. But when neither army possessed any artillery 
that could do more than throw large stones, these 

[96] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

walls were really stronger against the enemy than 
stone walls were against cannon. 

To protect the soldiers who mounted these walls, 
stakes were driven at intervals along the top, and 
branches woven in and out so as to make a thick 
wickerwork or very coarse basketwork strong 
enough to stop an arrow, a dart, or the stones flung 
by the slingers. In order to repulse attacks, piles of 
stones and bits of timber, trunks of trees, earthen- 
ware vessels of water kept hot over fires, were made 
ready along the ramparts to be thrown upon the 
attacking columns. There was little or no difference 
between the permanent walls of a city, with their 
watch-towers at intervals, and the walls built by the 
Romans outside, except, perhaps, that these were 
of smaller size. 

Having finished the main part of these siege- 
works, the fight between Gauls and Romans be- 
gan by a cavalry battle between the walls. After a 
doubtful struggle, the Gauls were put to flight, and 
many of them were slain while trying to make their 
way through the narrow gates of the camp. Here 
the horsemen became confused, interfering with one 
another, and the Germans, who were fighting in 
alliance with Caesar's men, were able to slay many 
of them, driving them finally within their camp with 

[97] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

great loss. Many of the Gauls, when they saw it 
was impossible to get through the gates, slipped 
from their horses, flung themselves into the ditch 
that surrounded the camp, made their way across 
it, and tried to climb up the outside of the breast- 
work. Here they were exposed to the darts and ar- 
rows and stones flung by the besiegers, and many 
of them perished. So great was the confusion that 
finally the leader of the Gauls, Vercingetorix, had 
to order the great wooden gates to be closed, partly 
to keep the victorious besiegers out, and partly to 
force at least some of the Gauls to defend them- 
selves in the plain outside the city. 

During the night that followed this first attack, 
the Gauls held a council of war, and decided that 
the only hope of saving themselves was to bring 
about the arrival of an army of Gauls from outside. 
Orders were given, therefore, that all the horse- 
men should depart from the city secretly, make their 
way through the unfinished works of the Romans, 
and then riding, each man to his own tribe, to call 
upon every man in Gaul capable of bearing arms to 
advance to the relief of the besieged city. The mes- 
sage was that the liberty of all Gaul depended upon 
saving the force shut up in Alesia. By this means 
he thought that he would be able to raise an army 

[98] 




The Conqueror of Gaul 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

of some eighty thousand men before his provisions 
were exhausted. He calculated that there was 
enough food to last a month, or even longer if he 
should put the garrison upon reduced rations. 

When the horsemen had departed, Vercingetorix 
gave orders that every sort of food should be 
brought into one place under his own charge, and 
threatened death to any one who should disobey. 
Besides the corn, they had cattle and sheep in great 
numbers. That same night he decided it was best 
to withdraw all his forces inside the walls and to 
give all his efforts to keeping the Romans out of 
the city. 

Of these plans Caesar soon learned, from pris- 
oners or from deserters, and foreseeing that, above 
all, he must prevent the Gauls from obtaining 
supplies, he set his soldiers to make a twenty foot 
ditch around the whole city and caused all the pro- 
visions of the Romans to be carried back well be- 
yond the ditch, in order that the besieged Gauls 
might not be able by a sudden attack to seize any 
part of the Roman supplies. Having thus made his 
provisions safe, Caesar, to provide a defence against 
the expected army of relief, constructed a second 
fortification around the first, so as to surround the 
whole city with two rings of fortification, one to 

[99] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

keep the besiegers from getting out, the other to 
protect the Romans against the rescuing army of 
Gauls. 

At every eighty feet along this intrenchment he 
built great wooden towers strongly garrisoned. 
The intrenchments themselves were protected on 
the outside by two deep ditches, and in front of 
these ditches were great pits in which large trees 
were set with sharpened branches, and beyond these 
pits were others, shallower, in the middle of each 
being a sharpened stake. Csesar describes in full 
his method of protecting the intrenchments which 
seems to show that this method of protecting de- 
fences was not well known to the Roman people. In 
brief, it consisted of a wall, two ditches, deep pits 
filled with trees having branches sharpened, smaller 
sloping pits containing sharpened stakes, and then 
a space over which were sharp iron spikes set into 
posts driven into the ground, among which cavalry 
could not gallop. 

The whole object of fortifications of this kind, 
both ancient and modern, is to delay the attack of 
outsiders. If they can be prevented from making 
a dash up to the fortifications, and are forced to 
pick their way slowly, they are kept for a long time 
under the fire of the defending forces. 

[100] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

Traces of some of these defensive works made by 
Csesar's soldiers have been found in modern times 
in Gaul, especially during the time of Napoleon 
III. This emperor was deeply interested in Caesar's 
campaigns. He wrote a book about them, and set 
men to work upon the sites of some of his battles 
and sieges in order to find traces of the old Roman 
works. So we have not only Caesar's descriptions, 
but even some of the remains of his fortifications 
to guide us in understanding them. 

There would have been little use in these works 
of the Roman soldiers if they had not possessed 
something to take the place of modern artillery and 
firearms. In addition to their slingers and their 
bowmen, the Romans had the machines for throw- 
ing stones and arrows. These were of three kinds, 
two being the catapults and scorpions, which cor- 
responded to our light artillery ; these could be used 
not only upon fortifications, but even upon open 
ground. They were little else than great bows set 
upon a framework — a sort of giant bow-gun hav- 
ing a flat piece in which great bolts or arrows 
could be placed, and a sort of winch, or windlass, 
that would draw back the cord of the bow. These 
were not unlike the other third kind of machine 
that was used in sieges, but this — the ballista, or 

[101] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

thrower — was much larger and heavier and usually 
hurled great stones. 

These artillery machines were in charge of a 
corps of men that went under the name " fabri," or 
workmen, and corresponded to modern artillery- 
men and engineers. For ordinary siege-works, such 
as were used in taking the first of the three strong 
towns fortified in this campaign, the Romans made 
use of a mound similar to that we have spoken of 
in previous sieges. This they called the " agger." 
It was built of wood, stones, and earth, to a height 
that would bring the besiegers on a level with the 
walls of the town they were attacking. To protect 
the workmen while building the agger, forms of 
moving breastworks were built of timbers, and even 
set upon rollers. Behind these the workmen were 
protected and gradually built up the agger until it 
reached the walls. 

These moving breastworks were of all sizes, from 
one large enough to protect a few men to an enor- 
mous moving tower. Big shields were also used, and 
now and then breastworks of logs could be thrown 
up wherever they were needed. Where the walls of 
the city were low, and the city itself was not upon 
a high hill, these methods enabled the Romans to 
approach the walls, but in the siege of Alesia they 

[ 102] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

could not be used because of the hill upon which the 
city was built. Consequently, before this place the 
siege was really a blockade — an attempt to starve 
out the garrison rather than to destroy the walls 
and enter the city; and the fortification toward the 
open country was, as we have seen, merely to keep 
the Gauls from making an assault against Caesar's 
embankments by keeping him for a long time at a 
distance and under the fire of his artillery. 

The only part of the city from which there was 
danger that Vercingetorix could make a sudden 
rush with a large force was that long plain west- 
ward of the city where the cavalry fight had taken 
place. Across this Cassar set the Romans to digging 
a ditch, twenty feet wide, with perpendicular sides. 
While this would not keep the Gauls back long, it 
would prevent their troops from rushing upon the 
Romans during the building of the main defences 
outside of it, since these began nearly a quarter of 
a mile back of the ditch. 

Having completed two lines of fortification fully 
ten miles in circuit, protected by ditches and stakes 
and trees, as already described, Csesar awaited at- 
tacks either from the Gauls within the city or from 
the great army summoned to their help. The Gauls 
were doing their best to go to the help of their great 

[103] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

leader. Although they did not send all the fighting- 
men of the country, they called upon each of the 
tribes to send so large a number that when the re- 
lieving army set out upon its march for Alesia it 
numbered two hundred and thirty-eight thousand 
strong, of whom eight thousand were horsemen. 

While this vast host was being gathered, Cassar's 
men had been riding about the country gathering 
up everything that was eatable so as to support 
themselves in case they should be forced to sustain 
a long siege, and the Gauls within the city had been 
as saving as possible to make their food last until 
the relieving army should appear. 

Councils of the chiefs were held and every des- 
perate proposal considered. They even expelled 
from the town all who were unable to fight — old 
men, women, and children. These came in pitiful 
throngs to the Roman fortifications, begging to be 
taken as slaves, prisoners — anything, if only they 
could get food. But Caesar posted guards along the 
lines and left the miserable creatures to starve be- 
tween the Roman and the Gallic walls. These poor 
wretches were the townsfolk into whose homes the 
Gallic soldiers had come. 

But soon after the driving out of these townsfolk, 
the outlooks upon the Roman and the Gallic ram- 

[ 104] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

parts suddenly saw a body of Gallic horsemen 
upon a great hill to the westward of the Roman 
lines, and as these came into view and arrayed 
themselves on the height, they were seen to be fol- 
lowed by a numberless multitude of foot soldiers. 
These tall, fair-haired warriors wore armour bril- 
liantly coloured, tartans, plumes, rich cloaks, besides 
gold ornaments upon their necks; and they were 
armed with spears, lances, bows, and long swords. 

At once the Gauls within the town burst into 
cheers and demanded to be led against the Romans. 
Vercingetorix had made all ready for the sally, and 
his troops carried great bundles of wood, baskets of 
earth for filling up the trenches, and pushed for- 
ward breastworks mounted upon rollers, to protect 
them in the attack. 

Meanwhile the Romans arrayed themselves 
along their lines of fortifications, both inner and 
outer, while the Roman cavalry, many of whom 
were Germans fighting as Caesar's allies, rode for- 
ward to meet the Gallic horsemen. The battle of 
the cavalry lasted during a whole afternoon, but 
just at sunset the German cavalry, drawn up in a 
solid body, put the Gallic cavalry to rout and then 
falling upon the archers who were drawn up behind 
them, cut them down with their swords. 

[105] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

It must be remembered that this battle was 
fought in a great plain in full view of both Gauls 
and Romans, and that had the Roman force been 
defeated, an attack from the town would have been 
made upon their fortifications. But with the flight 
of the Gallic cavalry the besieged lost hope and re- 
tired once more within their walls. 

During the whole of the next day the Gauls 
were getting ready for a grand attack, and, sud- 
denly, at midnight, was heard a terrifying shout 
as their enormous relieving army advanced down 
hill against the Roman ramparts. 

Now was seen the value of Caesar's preparations ; 
for, though both sides suffered from the stones and 
arrows that were shot in vast numbers through the 
darkness (for there could be no light except from 
bonfires or from torches, here and there) yet the 
Gauls were unable to cross the ground that had 
been so well guarded with sharpened stakes, trees, 
and pits. Very few of them were able to make their 
way through these defences, and these few the Ro- 
mans repulsed, sending bodies of men at times to 
one part or another of the wall as they were needed. 
Neither of the Roman walls was broken, and to- 
ward daylight the attack had failed. 

Just north of Caesar's position he had been com- 

[ 106] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

pelled to leave an opening in his line of fortifica- 
tions. In this opening" were posted two legions, 
about eight thousand men. Having learned of this 
weak point from the people of the country, the 
Gauls sent sixty thousand men around the hills to 
attack these less protected legions, while their cav- 
alry pretended to make a strong attack on the Ro- 
man lines, and Vercingetorix led his men out also 
against the near fortifications of the Romans. A 
general attack followed. Armed with long poles 
with iron hooks at the end, the Gauls attempted to 
tear the logs apart. Earth and bundles of branches 
were thrown into the ditches, and the Romans, 
fighting against their foes on both sides, were sorely 
distressed, since the men at each rampart had no 
means of knowing whether their comrades would 
be able to keep the enemy from attacking them in 
the rear. 

Caesar, on a great height just south of the city, 
could view the whole scene, sending horsemen with 
orders directing the reserves wherever they were 
needed. The fiercest attacks were made on the two 
legions in the opening of the line, and upon those 
who fronted the city against the army of Vercinge- 
torix. Gradually the ditches and pits were being 
filled up, and the Gauls were able to approach the 

[107] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Roman lines. Caesar sent his best lieutenant, the 
Marshal Labienus, to the point where the attack 
was most dangerous, and at the foot of the hill 
where Caesar himself was posted, the attack so 
nearly succeeded that Caesar had to ride down to 
the threatened point to hearten his soldiers. 

But the Gauls were driven back everywhere, ex- 
cept where they had attacked the unprotected le- 
gions. Calling every man who could be spared, 
Caesar got together four thousand Romans, and in 
his crimson cloak, a garment worn by the Roman 
commanders only, he led his men to the attack. Just 
as they reached the thick of the fight, the Roman 
(or German) cavalry appeared to rescue their com- 
rades and drove the Gauls into the very arms of 
the approaching forces under Caesar. 

Of the whole sixty thousand men sent to this at- 
tack, but few escaped death or capture. 

The Gauls were always most fierce in attack, but 
yielded quickly when discouraged; and the failure 
of this attempt so disheartened them that during 
the following night their whole host took to flight, 
pursued by the Roman and German cavalry, who, 
uftil morning, were hunting the fugitives and slay- 
ing them. 

Vercingetorix gave up all hope of rescue and 

[108] 



SIEGE OF ALESIA 

nobly offered to yield himself to the Romans, in the 
hope of gaining terms for the rest. Caesar, seated in 
state, received the Gallic chieftains, among whom 
came Vercingetorix, richly dressed and fully armed. 
Riding in state around his Roman conqueror, he 
then dismounted at the foot of the throne, laid his 
sword and armour at Caesar's feet, and yielded him- 
self captive. 

This brave chieftain deserved a nobler fate than 
befell him, for, after six years' imprisonment in a 
Roman dungeon, he was paraded in the triumph 
awarded to Caesar, and then put to death. 

The heroic defence made by Vercingetorix at 
Alesia caused the Emperor Napoleon III, who 
wrote a life of Julius Caesar, and also an elaborate 
study of ancient artillery, to erect a statue of this 
brave Gaul, at Alise, the modern town that stands 
on the site of the city that saw Vercingetorix de- 
feated. 

From this siege we learn the state of the art of 
taking cities just at the beginning of the Roman 
Empire. The next siege is also Roman, and shows 
how the well disciplined armies of the empire suc- 
ceeded in attacking one of the greatest strongholds 
of the Old World, when it was defended by a race 
as brave as themselves who had every advantage of 

[109] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

position as well as of defences enormous in strength 
and especially notable for their skilful arrangement 
in triple lines. 

The city of Jerusalem suffered many sieges, but 
none of them so long contested, so interesting, and 
so terrible in its cost of lives, as the siege by Titus 
in the first century of our era, 70 a.d. 



[110] 



JERUSALEM, 70 A.D. 

WHILE the Jews were under the domi- 
nation of the Roman Empire there 
were many changes in their fortunes. 
Some of the Roman governors gained the people's 
goodwill and were loyally supported by them; 
others by taxation and abuses excited them to re- 
volts, which, however, were never long successful. 

One of the most serious of these rebellions took 
place during the reigns of Nero and his successor, 
Vespasian, the latter for a time being Nero's gen- 
eral before he succeeded to the throne. During Ves- 
pasian's campaigns those who escaped from other 
cities taken by him made their way to Jerusalem, 
and gradually in this city a strong force opposed to 
the Roman government was built up. 

But not all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were in 
favour of the rebellion. War broke out in the city 
itself between the various parties, and the chief 
power came into the hands of John of Giscala, head 
of those who were known as the Zealots — the patri- 
otic party. A very strong party, however, was 

[in] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

headed by another Jewish captain, Simon bar 
Giora, and still a third, under a very rich Jew 
named Eleazar, once a lieutenant of John the Zea- 
lot, had seized the inner temple and revolted against 
his own leader; thus making three factions that 
fought one another within the city walls, all of them 
oppressing the more peaceable citizens. 

Before Vespasian had reached the walls of Jeru- 
salem in his triumphant campaign, Nero died, and, 
after two brief reigns by Otho and Vitellius, Ves- 
pasian was called to the throne and to Rome. For 
two years there was no further attempt to conquer 
the Israelites, and then Vespasian sent his son, 
Titus, to subdue the city. At about the beginning 
of the siege, in the year 70 a.d., a great multitude 
of Jews were coming to the city for the celebration 
of the Passover, so that the city was full of stran- 
gers from all over the country at the time when 
Titus marched his forces against it. 

Titus, came by boats on the Nile, landed and 
marched to Cesarea, bringing with him more than 
five Roman legions as well as some five thousand 
other soldiers. He made his first camp to the north- 
ward of the city, another on the west, and a third 
to the eastward on the Mount of Olives, only sepa- 
rated from the walls by the Valley of Kedron. 

[112] 



JERUSALEM 

Titus's order of march as described by Josephus, 
shows that his army was fully equipped with every- 
thing that Roman military art demanded for car- 
rying on a skilful siege. In describing the march 
Josephus tells how it was led by the auxiliaries of 
light-armed troops, followed by the pioneers, or 
workmen. Next came the baggage, with a strong 
guard, then Titus, with a bodyguard of horsemen, 
a body of pikemen, and the cavalry. Next in line 
came the military engines, or, probably, the metal 
parts of these, which were loaded upon waggons 
drawn by mules. Next followed the tribunes and the 
leaders of cohorts, the trumpeters, the bearers of 
ensigns and the Roman eagle, after whom marched 
the legionary soldiers in their armour, armed with 
the Roman pilum, or spear, the short sword, and the 
shield. More baggage and servants, a second body 
of hired soldiers, and the rear guard, closed the 
march. 

Soon after his arrival, Titus, with a chosen body 
of six hundred horsemen, started on a scouting ex- 
pedition around the walls of the city to pick out the 
right point of attack. Up to this time there had been 
no sign that the Jews were upon the lookout, but 
just as Titus turned from approaching the city to 
ride parallel with the walls, a great throng of Jews 

[113] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

suddenly burst from one of the gates, charged 
through the Roman horsemen, separating them into 
two parties, and surrounded Titus and a few of his 
immediate followers. 

Titus had not expected an attack and wore 
neither helm nor breastplate. But, though darts 
were showered upon him, he escaped unhurt and led 
a fierce charge, cutting down all who opposed him 
and forcing his way through to the main body of 
his troops. Then he withdrew to his camp. 

But the Jews fought one another as eagerly as 
they attacked the Romans. Not long after this at- 
tack, during the celebration of the Passover in the 
Temple, John of Giscala's men hid daggers under 
their robes, and falling upon Eleazar's followers 
slew them in the Temple itself. A general fight fol- 
lowed, which ended in the three Jewish factions be- 
ing reduced to two which agreed to hold the Tem- 
ple against all others. These terrible internal fights 
had caused much of the food to be wasted or burned, 
and so the city was in poor condition to resist Titus. 

Nevertheless, we have seen how bravely they fell 
upon the Roman soldiers upon their first coming. 

This was the first of the fierce sallies the Romans 
had to meet. A second soon followed. While the 
Tenth legion was building its camp upon the 

[114] 



JERUSALEM 

Mount of Olives, throwing up the breastworks and 
erecting their huts after the usual Roman fashion, 
suddenly another body of Jewish soldiers came 
dashing out of one of the city gates, poured down 
into the valley of Kedron, rushed up the hill on the 
other side, and were in the midst of the disordered 
Romans, before the legionaries could seize their 
arms or make the slightest resistance. Even the Ro- 
man veterans took to flight. 

Titus, who seems to have been a most vigilant 
commander, came to their rescue with a body of 
cavalry, riding from the north against the flank of 
the Jews and driving them down the hill and back 
into the valley, even up to the very city gates. In 
this attack Titus fought like the bravest of the 
common soldiers, and after the Jews had been re- 
pulsed stationed along the hill a strong guard for 
protection, recalling the Tenth Legion to their 
work upon the camp. 

But hardly had this second sally been repulsed 
than a Jew was seen to mount upon the walls of 
Jerusalem and to wave his long cloak in the air, ap- 
parently as a signal for another attack. A greater 
throng than before poured out, attacking Titus's 
men, who had been placed to protect the unfin- 
ished camp. Once more a fierce fight took place 

[115] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

which might have resulted in the complete defeat 
of the Romans, except that when the legionaries 
saw their general surrounded and refusing to give 
ground, they feared for his safety, were ashamed 
of their retreat, and rallied in such numbers that 
the sally was repulsed. 

Josephus, the historian, tells how the Romans 
objected to Titus's risking his life among these 
desperate Jews, who, the Romans said, were " fond 
of dying," for their way of fighting was not like 
that of the Roman soldiers, but more like that of 
the Arabs of to-day, who will charge without a 
thought of life even against rapid-fire guns before 
which they must go down in hundreds. 

When the Romans were safely in their camp, 
Titus ordered as the first step in the siege that the 
valley surrounding the walls should be filled up in 
certain places, to make it possible for his engines — 
that is, his rams and stone-throwers — to batter the 
walls. The Jews were not strong enough to prevent 
this work, but they used every means to annoy the 
Romans, shooting at them from the walls, and 
rushing upon them from the gates whenever any 
point seemed not well guarded. 

As it was known to the Romans that a large part 
of the Jews within the city would have been glad 

[116] 



JERUSALEM 

to make terms, the Jews took advantage of this to 
play a clever trick upon their enemies. 

A few days after the valley had been filled up, a 
great throng of Jews came rushing out of one of 
the gates near by and moved irregularly toward the 
Roman army, while from the walls above other 
Jews hurled stones at them, reviled them, and in 
every way tried to make the Romans believe that 
these men were deserters. The fugitives came di- 
rectly to the Romans, making signs of peace, and 
offered to conduct a strong Roman force through 
one of the gates of the city. A large party of the 
Romans were deceived and went with the Jews to 
one of the gates, expecting that it would be opened. 
But no sooner were these Romans in the space be- 
tween the two towers that guarded the gateway, 
than they were attacked by the very Jews who had 
pretended to be friendly, and at the same moment 
those that were upon the walls hurled missiles upon 
them from above. In this way many Romans were 
killed, and only a very few succeeded, by covering 
themselves with their shields, in fighting their way 
through the mob and returning to the Roman 
camp. 

All through Josephus's story it is evident that he 
is saying whatever he can to make himself agree- 

[117] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

able to the Roman commander, and in this case he 
tells us that Titus did not believe the Jews' pretence 
of friendship, because they had refused terms only 
the day before; and he tells how Titus wished to 
punish severely these Romans who had, without or- 
ders, left their places in the line, but that the other 
faithful legionaries begged mercy for their com- 
rades. 

This levelling of the ground before the walls took 
up four days, and after he was ready to begin the 
siegework, Titus strengthened his whole line, 
brought up his baggage, and proceeded to construct 
the siege-machines and to pour upon the city walls a 
heavy fire of stones, darts, and arrows. In prepara- 
tion for the serious siege Titus had burned all the 
suburbs outside the walls and had started to build a 
mound against the city. 

Meanwhile the Jews erected upon the walls their 
machines for throwing darts and stones and tim- 
bers, but according to Josephus, they did not at 
first know how to use these, and so shot with very 
little effect. During all the time the work was car- 
ried on outside, the Romans were never free of the 
fear, day or night, that a strong force of Jews 
might attack them. They had to build great man- 
telets to protect the workmen upon the mound. 

[118] 



JERUSALEM 

These, as usual, were made of branches woven to- 
gether and covered on the outside with rawhides, 
and would protect from four to half a dozen men 
'against all except the heaviest missiles. 

The fire of the Roman artillery was terrific. Some 
of their machines hurled great stones weighing 
about a hundred and twenty pounds fully a quarter 
of a mile. These stones were light-coloured, and 
consequently as they came through the air the Jews 
were able to give warning of their flight, which they 
are said to have done by a phrase which Josephus 
gives as "The son cometh!" It is supposed that 
the text is corrupt here, and that the original word 
may have been one meaning " stone." The Romans 
met this device by blackening the stones, after 
which they were not so easily seen. 

As the Roman machines could be adjusted to 
fire different distances, it was necessary to know the 
range. They learned this by attaching a small piece 
of lead to a cord, throwing the weight over to the 
wall and afterward measuring the string when it 
was drawn in. During this bombardment the Ro- 
man engineers kept a vigilant watch both day 
and night, for the furious quarrels inside of Jeru- 
salem had been put aside so that all might fight 
against the enemy. Not only did the Jews shoot ar- 

[119] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

rows, darts, and stones from the top of the wall, but 
rushing out with torches and pitch, did their best 
to destroy the Roman works by fire, pressing their 
attack so closely at times that they even climbed 
upon the sheds covered with hides that had been 
built to protect the engines and their workers. They 
destroyed some, and Titus was forced to send cav- 
alry and archers both to protect his artillery and 
rams, and also by their missiles to keep the Jewish 
archers and slingers from gathering on the walls 
to annoy the besiegers. 

Although the rams had been brought up against 
the walls, these were so solid that little effect was 
produced by the rain of blows, except at one cor- 
ner of a tower where a stone or two were moved out 
of place. The Roman forces were now able to pre- 
vent the smaller attacks, but they could not prevent 
the sallies of larger forces, and we are told of one 
attack, coming after a long interval, which was 
pressed home so closely that the machines of the 
Romans would have been captured except for the 
arrival of a new force of soldiers from Alexandria, 
who, marching in close order, succeeded in driving 
off the Jews with great slaughter. In this battle 
Titus is said to have killed twelve men with his own 
sword. 

[120] 



JERUSALEM 

In order to strengthen the works outside against 
these sallies Titus ordered the construction of three 
great towers, each fifty cubits in height — that is, 
a little less than a hundred feet. 

These great siege-towers were enormously heavy, 
arid were covered with iron plates. One of them fell, 
one night, shortly after it had been put together, 
causing a great panic among the Romans, who ran 
about " demanding the watchword," that they 
might know one another in the darkness. The two 
remaining towers, however, being too high to be 
reached by the missiles of the Jews, too heavy to be 
overturned when struck by stones fired from the 
battlements, and being protected against fire by the 
iron plates, enabled the Romans to keep up a con- 
stant fire of arrows, darts and stones, downward 
upon the walls, which were soon cleared of the Jew- 
ish soldiers. Then Titus was able to bring up the 
largest of his rams, which was called " Niko," from 
the Greek word meaning " I conquer." The work 
of this ram was so effective that the Jews decided 
to abandon the wall; the Romans climbed up and 
took possession of it, and thus took the first line of 
defence within fifteen days after the beginning of 
the siege. 

Having thus entered one part of the city, Titus 

[ 121 ] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

formed a strong camp inside, just out of range of 
the second wall where the Jews gathered in great 
numbers, and gave the Romans not a moment's rest. 
No hour, day or night, was free from fighting ; both 
Jews and Romans slept in their armour, ready for 
an instant call, and both were worn out by the in- 
cessant fighting. In these fights many bold feats of 
arms were performed by single soldiers, the Jews 
pitting against the Roman valour a desperate cour- 
age that valued not life if they could slay a Roman 
as they fell. 

Titus's main attack was against a great tower ap- 
parently abandoned by the Jews, but really oc- 
cupied by eleven desperate men who lay there in 
ambush. The Romans were too wary to climb into 
the apparently empty tower, but finally one of 
them, named iEneas, volunteered, and was slain by 
a stone thrown by one of the Jewish soldiers. Mean- 
while the Roman ram outside played so vigorously 
against the tower that all hope of saving it was 
abandoned by the Jews, who set fire to it and then 
seemed to the Romans to leap directly into the 
flames, though really they escaped by a passage 
leading underground. 

To take the second wall required only five days 
of fierce fighting, but even after the Romans had 



JERUSALEM 

made their entiy, the Jews rushed upon them so 
fiercely as to drive them out again. A large force of 
Romans was now gathered, made a second assault 
upon the broken wall, once more captured it, and 
within a few days had levelled it to the ground. 

Next, in order to impress the Jews with his 
strength, Titus suspended the siege for five days, 
during which his soldiers, arrayed in their best ar- 
mour, were drawn up in massive columns before the 
city and received their pay. During this interval 
Josephus was sent to persuade his fellow country- 
men to surrender, and fills pages of his history with 
the eloquent and moving speeches which he claims 
to have delivered. But those whom Josephus de- 
scribes as " crazy fanatics," and whom it is possible 
to regard as devoted patriots, prevented the rest 
from yielding, despite the loss of two out of their 
three great defences, and despite the ravages of a 
famine so terrible that we may well omit to tell the 
horrors which Josephus relates, only recording that 
the starving Jews made their way out of the city 
in such numbers in search of the few herbs and roots 
that could be found between their walls and the 
Roman lines that they were captured by the Ro- 
mans at the rate of more than five hundred a dav. 
After the unutterably cruel custom of the time, 

[123] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

these poor creatures were crucified within sight of 
the walls, to induce their fellow countrymen to sur- 
render. 

When the siege was resumed, Titus began four 
great mounds against the third wall. Upon these 
the Jews once more began their fierce sallies, and 
were able to direct against their builders a much 
more effective fire, since their skill by constant prac- 
tice had greatly improved and they had been able 
to increase the number of their machines to three 
hundred that shot darts (ballistas) and forty that 
threw stones (mangonels). 

While fighting thus bravely, most of the Jews 
were in the extremity of starvation and in the quest 
of food fought one another, or robbed the helpless, 
without scruple or mercy. The refugees from the 
city continued to go to the Romans until even these 
hardened soldiers were tired of slaying them. 

In so fierce and constant a battle all details are 
lost. We can only tell the general features of the 
fighting. One of the great Jewish strongholds was 
the Tower of Antonia, which stood just to the 
northwestward of Solomon's Temple, based upon a 
lofty rock. To take this, one of the great mounds 
had been built. But the Jewish leader, John, under- 
mined it — that is, dug a great hole beneath the 

[ 124] 



JERUSALEM 

mound, supporting its roof by timbers. Then filling 
up the space thus made with wood and rubbish cov- 
ered with pitch, he set fire to his mine just about as 
the mound was completed. The wooden supports 
were burned away, and the front of the mound 
fell in. 

Meanwhile the other Jewish leader, Simon, tried 
to destroy the other mounds and to burn the artil- 
lery and rams, carrying his attack so far that he 
even reached the walls of the Roman camp within 
the city, being repulsed only after the Romans 
brought their reserves under Titus to attack the 
Jews on the flank. All the mounds were destroyed 
in this way, either by undermining or by fire, where- 
by the Roman work was all to do over again. 

Titus now held a general council of his officers, 
discussing the right way to continue the siege, and 
it was decided to surround what was left of the Jew- 
ish defences with a great wall over six miles in 
length and containing at intervals thirteen posts 
of greater strength for garrisons. At this work the 
Romans strove eagerly, as it promised them safety 
from the terrible sallies; and when in three days it 
was completed, Titus kept it under constant in- 
spection that it might not be broken through. 

This shut in the Jews entirely, and the ravages of 

[125] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

famine were worse than ever, while the Romans, 
who had plenty of provisions sent from Alexandria 
and the country round about, cruelly taunted the 
starving Israelites by exhibiting their plenty. In- 
numerable bodies of the dead were thrown from the 
Jewish wall until the city was surrounded by them. 

Four new and larger banks, or mounds, were be- 
gun, the materials having to be brought from 
eleven miles away, since all suitable material nearer 
had been long ago used up. These new banks took 
three weeks to build, but despite desperate attacks 
of the Jews, which, however, daily grew weaker, the 
Romans were able to bring their engines close to the 
strong Antonia Tower; and also, by gathering in 
strong forces and making a roof, or testudo, of 
shields over their heads, they worked fiercely at the 
foundations to undermine the wall. 

At last, one wall having fallen into the opening 
left by the first Jewish mine, the Romans discov- 
ered that another wall had been constructed behind 
the first. Here Josephus gives a long declamatory 
address wherein Titus appeals to his troops to 
make the assault — an address which it is hard to 
imagine put into the mouth of a modern general. A 
body of eleven Roman volunteers attempted to 
carry the breach, but their leader and three others 

[126] 



JERUSALEM 

were killed and the other seven seriously wounded. 
No other Romans coming forward for several days, 
the Jewish defence seems to have become careless, 
for a night attack, made unexpectedly, succeeded, 
and the Romans were able to take possession of the 
breach. 

The Romans were now in possession of the An- 
tonia Tower, but met with a firmer resistance than 
ever when they tried to force their way into the 
great Temple just south of it. Here began again 
the old story of hand-to-hand fighting by night and 
day, but the Romans were not able to make their 
way into the enclosure of the Temple. One cen- 
turion, named Julian, seeing his comrades afraid to 
advance, at one time pushed forward singlehanded 
and drove the crowd of Jews back. But, slipping 
on the marble floor because of the nails in his shoes, 
he was slain by the Jews, despite the most gallant 
fighting, and not a Roman went to the help of their 
brave champion. 

Meanwhile the Romans holding the breach were 
gradually able to enlarge it, and the Jews ranged 
opposite them dragged their engines forward so 
as to command the point attacked. Besides the 
hand-to-hand fighting, the Jews resorted to strat- 
egy. Thus at one time they packed a portion 

[127] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

of the Temple building full of combustibles and 
then lured the Romans forward by a pretended re- 
treat, setting fire to the pitchy wood as they retired. 
A great conflagration sprang up at once, and most 
of the attacking Romans lost their lives. But this 
success was dearly purchased, for the Romans, see- 
ing part of the Temple burning, took pains to ex- 
tend the flames, and, thus destroying part of the 
walls, made the Temple at that point more difficult 
to defend. 

The Romans constructed mounds between the 
Tower of Antonia and the Temple wall and set 
three battering-rams to work, but these rams were 
captured by the Jews after a fierce hand-to-hand 
struggle. Once more the Romans resorted to fire, 
and succeeded in burning down a part of the Tem- 
ple building that faced the Antonia Tower. Since 
six days of battering had failed, it was evident that 
only fire could clear a path for the grand assault. 
Josephus pretends that Titus regretted the burning 
of the Temple and did all he could to check the 
flames, but there is little doubt that whatever their 
commander may have desired, the Roman soldiers 
saw the Temple could be taken in no other way, and 
eagerly carried the flames wherever they could find 
material that would burn. At length the whole 

[128] 




- 
o 



S3 



a 

o 
H 



JERUSALEM 

structure was ablaze and continued to burn for two 
days. Amid a fearful din of roaring fire, shouting 
Romans and shrieking Jewish citizens, the last 
great attack was delivered by the Roman legions 
and the Jews were slain by thousands in every part 
of Solomon's great Temple, even at the very altar 
itself. 

After the taking of the Temple, however, there 
was still a part of the upper city unsubdued. The 
Romans, full of triumph, were certain of taking 
the whole city, and in eighteen days' work suc- 
ceeded in raising mounds against the last wall of 
defence. The last wall was soon broken down, and 
the Jews scattered, each seeking safety for himself. 
Some of them went into underground refuges, but 
most were slain in the streets, through which the 
Roman soldiers roamed with swords drawn, slaying 
without mercy men, women, and children. 

Soon after, Titus gave orders that the whole city 
should be destroyed, save only the three great 
towers built by Herod, which he left standing to 
show how strong the fortifications had been. 

The siege of Jerusalem had taken even the Ro- 
mans over four months of the fiercest battling by 
day and by night, and had required all their bra- 

[129] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

very, science, and fortitude. More than a million 
Jews met death, and nearly one hundred thousand 
were taken captive, to go into slavery, to fight in 
the arena, to be led in triumph after Titus's chariot. 
The treasures of Solomon's Temple were paraded 
before the eyes of applauding Romans, and the ex- 
iled Jews were sent into every quarter of the globe 
— no longer a nation. 



[ 130] 



THE THIRD PERIOD 

Siege of Constantinople, by Saracens 
Siege of Paris, by Northmen 
Siege of Antioch, by Crusaders 



[131] 
[ 132] 



THE THIRD PERIOD 

THE change from the second to the third 
period came about partly from the general 
advance in civilisation. During the second 
period there had been conflicts mainly between 
enormous bodies of men belonging to different 
nations. The places attacked, though some of them 
were great strongholds, were mainly the chief cities 
of large countries outside of which there was little 
except small villages that did not dream of resist- 
ing a large army. 

But these armies, which had been to a great ex- 
tent modelled upon the Romans' organisation of 
strong legions of foot soldiers fighting with dart 
and short sword, had, at a later date, greatly 
changed their character. There had been increasing 
use of cavalry. The Roman army had been accus- 
tomed to use its mounted men merely as scouts, as 
an advance guard to protect the wings, or ends of 
their line of battle, and to open an engagement or 
complete a victory when the main body of the enemy 
had been broken. 

[133] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

The third period brings us to the Middle Ages 
and to the days of feudalism, when gradually civ- 
ilised mankind was being divided into two great 
classes, the land-owners and their tenants, or serfs, 
who were under their control. The feudal lords and 
their retainers were unwilling to fight upon foot, 
and also were unwilling to intrust power to the 
lower classes; consequently the mounted men be- 
came in all armies the most important part of the 
force, and the foot soldier was looked upon only as 
an assistant to follow up the attack of the mounted 
soldiers or to remain in reserve and to rescue the 
retreating cavalry. At the same time civilised lands 
were being divided into a number of small, more or 
less independent, portions. Instead of one king 
reigning over a large nation and leading all of its 
forces to battle, in the Middle Ages there were 
great numbers of petty lords, each with his small 
stronghold and his petty dependants who went 
to battle under his leadership. Except among the 
less civilised nations, or when some great enterprise 
like the Crusades brought vast bodies of men to- 
gether, great armies were seldom seen. Consequent- 
ly the strongholds that were built were very nu- 
merous, but usually rather fortified posts than 
walled cities. The nation, instead of being one of 

[134] 



THE THIRD PERIOD 

many towns dominated by a few big cities, became 
a place of widely distributed villages, each sur- 
rounding a single stronghold or mediaeval castle. 

Thus although the art of taking places by siege 
was by no means lost, and indeed was used fre- 
quently against large places, most battles came, in 
the Middle Ages, to be fought in the open between 
smaller bodies of men, and it was seldom that a 
great army was marshalled against a strong castle. 

We shall find during this period the first hints 
of a new form of warfare, a form that might be 
called " warfare by chemistry." This is marked by 
the appearance of the celebrated Greek fire, which 
at first chosen because of its power to burn, showed 
an explosive force that greatly terrified the enemy, 
and so was valuable. As the makers of Greek fire 
learned to increase its explosive power, it was used 
to propel itself from tubes, and the step from this 
use to that of driving stones and iron balls was soon 
taken. Greek fire thus became the forerunner of 
gunpowder, and brought about a complete change 
in sieges, in forts, and in the art of war. But this 
was not established until the fourteenth century, 
and until this time Greek fire was only a weapon 
used in connection with those that had been known 
for ages. But these latter were greatly developed 

[135] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

and improved. Only because of the first use of 
Greek fire is the siege of Constantinople by the 
Saracens, in the eighth century, here related, and 
something more is there told of this substance. 

It is stated by Captain Jervis, author of ' En- 
gines of War," that the Greek fire was thought to 
have been revealed to the Emperor Constantine by 
an angel from heaven, who told him he must use it 
for Christians only, and never divulge the secret 
of its making. Whoever should disclose it was to 
be declared accursed. The secret was kept over five 
hundred years before it became known to the Sara- 
cens. 

An English antiquarian points out the possibility 
that in our word " cracker," as used in ' fire- 
cracker," it may be that we have preserved the 
Anglo-Norman word crake, or " cracker," a name 
applied in early times to all explosives; but this is 
doubtful. 



[136] 



CONSTANTINOPLE ABOUT 717 A.D. 

IT is hardly fair to include in a book devoted to 
the taking of cities on account of the early 
sieges of Constantinople by the Saracens. In 
the first place, it was not one siege, but a long series 
of attacks extending over forty-four years, each 
conducted in the same way and with the same lack 
of result. In the second place, the city was not 
then taken, and there is nothing in these attempts of 
the Saracens to help us in understanding siege - 
methods, for the reason that the attack was not 
carried on in a scientific way and yet would have 
been successful had it not been for the use of some- 
thing new in warfare, or if not entirely new, new 
in the way it was employed. 

The Saracens, in extending their conquests over 
Africa and Asia, had, for the most part, taken 
cities by mere force of numbers and by impetuous 
attacks which nothing could resist. They fought, 
as has been so often said, almost with a desire of 
death, and in the belief that death in battle meant 
immediate entrance into a heaven of delights. 

[137] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Before approaching Constantinople they had al- 
ready taken Damascus and Alexandria, from which 
many clever engineers had made their escape into 
the greater and stronger city upon the Bosporus. 
Either one of these refugees, or, to repeat the com- 
monly accepted story, Callinicus, a Syrian architect 
coming from Heliopolis, brought to the city the 
knowledge of the composition of a burning sub- 
stance that has received a great number of names. 
Perhaps the best known is " Greek fire," but it has 
also been called wildfire, wet fire, fire-rain, and Me- 
dean fire. Its composition was a secret so well kept 
that in spite of the various attempts to give its in- 
gredients we are not certain just what these were. 

It was a semi-liquid that contained, usually, sul- 
phur, pitch, nitre, and petroleum, with possibly 
other explosive compounds. We know that it pro- 
duced a thick smoke, a light explosion, and a fierce 
flame that could not be put out with water, but was 
spread by it, especially by salt water. The only 
means of extinguishing it seems to have been either 
vinegar or wet sand. 

Burning substances had been used in warfare for 
many ages, being shown even upon the old Assyrian 
sculptures. They were known to the Chinese, to the 
Persians, and to the Romans, but at the time of this 

[138] 



CONSTANTINOPLE 

siege of Constantinople there seems to have been 
some new and more effective method of preparing 
the burning liquid, for all the stories of its employ- 
ment agree that it was terrible and effective in re- 
pelling attacks of men, in burning towers and 
ships, and that it was used in many methods which 
showed that it was prepared in a number of differ- 
ent forms. Certainly the secret of Greek fire was 
well kept, and the fire itself kept the city from fall- 
ing, as others had done, into the hands of the Mo- 
hammedans. 

The methods of the Saracen attack were, as has 
been said, usually plain assaults. Thus the city of 
Damascus, which was taken only about a genera- 
tion before this attack upon Constantinople, finally 
fell only after its Roman defenders had been de- 
feated in the open field. The Saracens had again 
and again attempted to swarm over the walls, but 
without success, when, to the great joy of the hard 
pressed garrison, the Roman general, Heraclius, 
brought up an army to the city's relief. 

Thus strengthened, the garrison threw open the 
gates and marched forth to drive away their Saracen 
foes, who had already begun to retreat. The Ro- 
mans followed so closely that they succeeded in 
capturing the rear guard of the Saracen army, and 

[139] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

their women and children. But when the Roman 
general attempted to take possession of these cap- 
tives, one of the Saracen women, enraged by his in- 
sults, snatched from the ground the sharp pegs that 
held down the tents, and calling her women around 
her, fought desperately against the Roman soldiers. 

While the Romans hesitated to slay these women, 
or to attack them, the Saracens, recovering from 
their first alarm, wheeled and rode back, attacked 
the Romans, unprepared, and put them to flight, 
then advanced once more to the walls of Damascus, 
where they made a new assault and took the city, 
pursuing and slaying the Romans for miles upon 
the surrounding plains. 

Apparently, the only difference between the ear- 
lier and this last attack was in the fierce bravery of 
the returning Saracens, rather than in any new 
method employed to take the city. 

There was a tradition among the Mohammedans 
that whoever should first succeed in taking Con- 
stantinople, the city of the Ca?sars, would not only 
have all his sins forgiven, but would succeed to 
the heritage of glory handed down by the Roman 
emperors. Since there had been, about the year 700, 
many changes on the Imperial throne, it was 
thought that the city would not be likely to offer 

[140] 



CONSTANTINOPLE 

any serious resistance; and, on the other hand, the 
Saracen empire was at its highest power and its 
greatest extent, reaching from India all along the 
southern shore of the Mediterranean northward into 
Spain, where it was bounded only by the Atlantic 
and the mountain heights. One historian says, " It 
seemed as if this Saracen crescent would grow into 
a full moon, covering all Europe." Nowhere had 
the cimeters of the invaders failed to win them vic- 
tory. 

Against Constantinople for the final attempt was 
led the best army that had ever attacked the Chris- 
tians, consisting of eighty thousand fighting men, 
while the Caliph awaited the result of the attack of 
this first force to furnish as many more men as 
might be required. According to Finlay, who wrote 
the " History of the Byzantine Empire," a hundred 
and eighty thousand men were employed in the 
expedition in one way and another. 

The Saracens captured the city of Pergamos, 
then marched to Abydos, and here, having joined 
their fleet, crossed the Hellespont and surrounded 
Constantinople. Toward the land side, Constanti- 
nople was protected by three high and thick walls, 
built higher as they were nearer the city, and each 
so pierced with loopholes that those within could 

[141] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

fire upon the assaulting army from several different 
levels, concentrating the fire of a number of lines 
against the attacking army. Owing to the heavy 
fire from these loopholes and from the engines that 
were set upon the top of the walls, every attempt to 
place ladders against the walls and to climb over 
them was repulsed with heavy loss, and the Saracens 
finally decided that they must blockade the city 
and, if possible, starve out the garrison. 

To prevent provisions being brought in, thou- 
sands of Saracen soldiers were sent to ride over 
the region to collect forage for the army and to de- 
stroy what they did not need for their own use. 
Meanwhile the rest encamped behind a strong 
earthwork, which had been protected by a deep 
ditch, in order that they might defend themselves 
against sallies from the besieged city. 

To blockade the sea wall, the Saracens sent their 
fleet of eighteen hundred vessels and transports, to 
guard the whole line of the coast. As a portion of 
them were entering the Bosporus, the strong cur- 
rent and a heavy wind threw a number of these ships 
into confusion, when the Greeks sending out swift 
galleys loaded with combustibles, succeeded in burn- 
ing a number of the Moslem ships and in driving 
others ashore. 

[142] 



CONSTANTINOPLE 

Enraged by this attack, the Saracen admiral se- 
lected his strongest vessels, and putting in each 
a hundred Arabs in complete armour, sailed directly 
up against the sea wall and by raising ladders at- 
tempted to force his way into the city. Here the 
Saracens met with the terrible Greek fire, poured 
from caldrons, thrown from great ladles, shot 
from war-machines. The sticky, burning, explosive 
liquid set fire to his vessels, burned a number of 
them, and forced the rest to retreat. No doubt the 
substance was greatly feared by the Moslems, as it 
had already been used against them in their earlier 
siege in 673. 

To put the story of the siege briefly, we may say 
that every attempt to approach the walls was de- 
feated either by storms of missiles or by torrents of 
Greek fire, and the Saracens were compelled to 
withdraw to their fortified camp, though they were 
too obstinate to give up the siege. The Caliph, who 
had promised to send reinforcements, died, and the 
Saracen army received but few additions. As winter 
came on, it proved to be most severe, and the coun- 
try round about was covered deeply with snow. The 
horses and camels of the Saracens died for want 
of forage; the soldiers themselves, unprepared for 
the northern climate, also perished in great num- 

[143] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

bers and were soon nearly starved from the diffi- 
culty of procuring food. 

The Constantinople forces, having had ample 
time to prepare for the siege, were well provisioned 
and did not suffer. When spring came, two Saracen 
fleets arrived from Africa and anchored in the bays 
near by, but did not dare to approach the walls for 
fear of the Greek fire or the fireships. 

Many among the crews of these new fleets were 
Christians, and seeing the weakness of the Saracens, 
they seized small boats and escaped to Constanti- 
nople. These refugees told of the misfortunes of the 
besiegers, and at once a fleet was sent out from 
Constantinople and succeeded in sending fireships 
among the enemy's vessels and also in approaching 
near enough to shoot Greek fire upon them from 
tubes set in the prows. Some ships were captured, 
some driven ashore, others burned. 

This destroyed all hopes of Moslem success. But 
not until many of their foraging parties had been 
captured and all horses and camels and mules eaten, 
did the Moslems give up the attempt to take the 
city. The few ships remaining from their fleet were 
all that they needed to carry away the remnant of 
their great army, for out of a hundred and eighty 
thousand only thirty thousand survived. 

[ 144] 



CONSTANTINOPLE 

Even after the retreat their misfortunes did not 
end. They were caught in a storm while passing 
through the Grecian Archipelago, were attacked 
by the Greeks of these islands, and at last only five 
of the Saracen squadron returned to tell the story 
of the Saracen failure. 

Finlay, from whose book the facts are taken, 
ascribes the victory partly to the possession by the 
Greeks of engines of war far larger and better than 
those of the Saracens; and not only did these en- 
gines throw the usual missiles, but also the terrible 
Greek fire to which the defeat of the Saracen fleet 
was due. The people of Constantinople had been 
accustomed to the use of Greek fire since about the 
year 673, or over forty years, for it was during the 
siege by the Saracens in that year that Callinicus is 
said to have told the emperor, Constantine Pogo- 
natus, how to make it. Constantine had used the 
Greek fire by projecting it from tubes set in the 
prows of fast galleys, and at a later time not only 
was it so used, but was projected from small tubes 
held in the hand or thrown in jars that would break 
as they fell. In later times the Greek fire was fre- 
quently used against the Saracens, and by some his- 
torians is believed to have been the salvation of 
Europe from the Mohammedan invaders. 

[ 145] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Europe was contending also against the northern 
races who pressed upon their more civilised neigh- 
bours to the southward just as the Saracens were 
attacking on the eastward and all along the south- 
ern shores of the Mediterranean. Out of the great 
turmoil of races were to come modern European 
nations. Some idea of the struggle farther north is 
given by the siege chosen for the next telling — that 
of the Northmen or Danes in their attempt to take 
the old city of Paris. The Danes fought for plun- 
der, and though at first they had little skill in war, 
they learned quickly from their enemies, and there- 
by became so able in attack and defence that before 
many centuries they had established themselves 
firmly in France, England, Russia, and Italy — 
where they united with the people, and gave 
strength to the races they overcame. 

The siege of Paris by the Danes in 885 did not 
differ in the nature of the operations from sieges 
three and a half centuries earlier, nor from those 
more than two centuries later. This long period of 
more than five hundred years saw little or nothing 
new in the taking of cities or in methods of defence. 
In every case, the idea of those outside was first to 
fill up the ditches and then, by the aid of ladders, to 
climb over the walls. If they could not do this, they 

[146] 



CONSTANTINOPLE 

tried to break down the walls with rams, or to bring 
up great towers, and by means of heavy volleys of 
darts, arrows, and stones to drive the defenders 
from the ramparts so that the walls could be at- 
tacked without loss. 

The usual rams had blunt heads, and by being 
swung against the walls again and again would 
shatter them. If instead of a blunt end, a sharp 
point was put on the great swinging timber, the 
engine was called a " bore," and was meant to pick 
out single stones, and so bore a hole through the 
walls. This opening once made could be easily 
enlarged into a breach. 

Both of these machines had to be protected by 
heavy sheds of timbers covered by rawhides, as 
burning pitch or oil and heavy stones were showered 
upon them from the walls as soon as they were 
brought near enough to reach the stonework. They 
had also to be guarded so that they could not be at- 
tacked by parties of soldiers sent out or lowered 
from the walls to destroy them. 

The defenders could protect the walls either by 
putting great mattresses or wooden guards between 
the ram-head and the stone, or by catching the rams 
in looped chains or ropes or in forked timbers. The 
ram was sometimes broken from its fastenings by 

[147] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

heavy timbers dropped upon it. But in all there was 
nothing new, as we know. 

The sharp -pointed bores were lighter than the 
rams, and so could be more easily moved. They were 
called by a number of fancy names, of which 
Charles Oman gives a few. Thus, in Latin (and 
most of the siege stories of this time are in Latin), 
we find the bore called a " musculus" or " little 
mouse," because it gnawed a hole; a " catus" or cat 
because it clawed out stones; a " vulpes" or fox, 
because it burrowed; and a scrofa or sus, that is, a 
sow or hog, because it rooted its way through the 
stonework. 

Mining was very common, and has always been 
carried on in much the same way. Before gun- 
powder, mining was followed by filling up the 
hole under the wall or tower with timbers and rub- 
bish. When these were burned, the ground above 
caved in. To guard against mining, those inside had 
to find the mine, dig out to meet it, drive out the 
enemy's miners, and fill up the hole. 

Scaling ladders were made in every form, of wood, 
of rope, of iron. Though men trying to climb these 
could easily be thrown down, yet when defenders 
were few and ladders were put up in many points 
at once it was hard to meet all the attacks; and at 

[ 148] 



CONSTANTINOPLE 

night constant watch had to be kept at all points for 
fear some party would erect a ladder and steal upon 
some unguarded portion of the wall. 

Great moving towers, built of wood and higher 
than the walls, meant to be rolled up directly 
against the defences, were, as we have seen, much 
used in the old Roman sieges. They were often 
many stories in height, and had big bridges drawn 
up against the front with hinges at the lower ends. 
When these were close enough, heavy volleys would 
clear the walls of defenders, the bridges would be 
dropped, and knights or soldiers could march across 
— as Alexander's men did at the siege of Tyre. 
These towers needed a smooth level road to the 
walls, and were of such enormous weight that the 
path for their advance had to be solid or they might 
sink in and upset or remain immovable. Sometimes, 
too, they could be battered to pieces by heavy stones 
flung from machines ; or they might be set on fire — 
as was so often done when Titus was trying to take 
Jerusalem. 

As to artillery before the invention of gunpow- 
der, we have already told something. But it may be 
well to divide the different kinds into classes. Those 
that threw the biggest stones were called " man- 
gonels " or " mangons," from a Greek word mean- 

[149] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

ing a trick or machine. The mangonel consisted of 
a long timber put between heavy ropes fastened 
between upright posts. When the timber was pulled 
back, the ropes were twisted, and then, the timber 
being let go, it flew over so as to fling anything put 
upon its end high upward and forward. It did not 
always shoot with the same force or accuracy, but 
could throw heavy beams, stones, or barrels and 
pots filled with burning pitch, could batter big 
walls, or by lucky hits could disable the engines of 
an enemy. The catapult and the trebuchet worked in 
a similar way. In later times — after the year 1100 
— weights were sometimes used instead of twisted 
ropes, as in the earliest forms. 

The ballista was a big bow, worked by machin- 
ery. It shot darts, arrows, and beams, and could be 
aimed straight at the object. In fact, the ballista 
was a big cross-bow, and it is believed that the cross- 
bow was only the ballista made small enough to be 
carried by the soldier. The use of these terms is, as 
has been said, mixed up and uncertain. Some writ- 
ers used one, some another for the same machine, 
but the general plans of them all were these two — 
the big beam throwing things by hurling them in 
a long curve upward, and the big bow that shot 
bolts or darts in a nearly straight line. 

[150] 



SIEGE OF PARIS IN 885 

DURING the Dark Ages, though there was 
much righting and many sieges which 
were more or less interesting, it was not 
a time of letters, and very few good descriptions of 
these sieges have been preserved. The few about 
which we know something have been described 
mainly in long poems written more for the pur- 
pose of glorifying feats of arms than of telling the 
plain facts of methods of warfare. 

Charles Oman, who has written a most interest- 
ing " History of the Art of War," says that we 
have a better account of a certain siege of Paris by 
the Danes than of any other during this whole pe- 
riod, that is, down to the time of the Crusades. This 
description comes in a long Latin poem written by 
a French poet named Abbou, surnamed " The 
Crooked." He was a monk of St. Germain des Pres. 
Though his Latin was not good, he tells his story 
well and in full detail, and from the poem Oman 
has given us the full story of this siege. 

The Paris of that day consisted mainly of the 

[ 151 ] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

island that is now the centre of the city. It was sur- 
rounded by walls connected with the two shores of 
the river by bridges protected on those shores by 
towers. These bridges were of wood supported by 
piles of stone. The towers were of stone, but the one 
on the north side of the river was little more than a 
third finished at the time when the great army of 
Danish soldiers arrived at the city and begged for 
permission for their vessels to proceed under the 
bridges in order that they might invade France. 
Though the Danes promised to do no harm to Paris 
itself, Odo, the Count, and Gozelin, the Bishop, 
of Paris, bravely refused on the ground that the 
Emperor had intended Paris to protect the rest of 
France against invasion. Siegfried, the commander 
of the Danes, then threatened to take the city by 
force or by famine. 

Landing from their boats, the Danes rushed 
upon the half -built tower, but after a vigorous 
fight, were driven back with loss. It had been so 
close a struggle, however, that the French spent the 
whole night in carrying from the city timbers and 
logs to increase the height of the unfinished tower, 
and in the morning the Danes found the tower 
twice as high as it had been the night before. 

It was now too strong to be taken by assault, 

[ 152] 



SIEGE OF PARIS 

so the Danes wove branches together to make man- 
telets, or shields, and carrying these over their 
heads, a strong column of men marched to the foot 
of the tower and then began to tear away the foun- 
dations, using heavy logs the ends of which were 
shod with iron points. But, expecting such an attack, 
the French had brought great caldrons of oil and 
pitch, and setting fire to these, they poured them 
down upon the mantelets. This set fire to the shields 
and the men beneath them were sorely burned, so 
that flinging their protection away, they rushed 
away and jumped into the river. 

The Danes' next attempt was to dig under- 
ground a mine leading to the bridge tower. This was 
propped up, as usual, with timbers, then filled with 
combustibles, which, being set on fire, burned away 
the timbers and allowed the ground to fall in be- 
neath, carrying away a part of the bridge tower. 
Again the Danes were driven back by timbers and 
stones dropped from the top of the tower upon the 
attacking column. 

Once more the besiegers came forward, placed a 
great pile of wood against the door of the tower, 
hoping to burn it down ; but when their big fire was 
lighted, the wind blew it away from the door and 
drove the besiegers back. From the tower and the 

[153] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

walls of the city during these attacks was poured 
so fierce a volley of bolts and darts, of stones and 
arrows, upon the attacking columns, that the Danes 
could not remain within range, but retreated to 
their boats after a loss of three hundred men. 

Any attempt to take the city by direct attack 
seemed hopeless, so the Danes built themselves a 
fortified camp protected by a ditch and stakes, and 
settled down for a regular siege. Their engineers 
built three great battering-rams, each covered by a 
strong timbered shed supported on sixteen great 
wheels. These sheds were big enough to hold sixty 
men. But the attacks of the Danes being delivered 
all at one point, the French were able to pour such 
a volley of missiles upon them that they were not 
able to bring the rams into action, probably because 
of the heavy stones thrown by catapults from the 
walls, and because they could not fill up the ditch 
that defended the walls without exposing their men 
to the French artillery. 

To protect themselves, they now made other 
mantelets, each covered with rawhides, of which 
they had plenty, since they had collected from the 
whole neighbourhood great herds of cattle, as well 
as a vast store of corn. While the men beneath these 
shields were filling up the ditch, throwing in, says 

[ 154] 



SIEGE OF PARIS 

Oman, clods of earth, boughs, straw, rubbish of all 
sorts — even their cattle and their French prisoners 
— an attack from the river was made at the same 
time, the boats being run against the sides of the 
bridge. All this was done under a constant fire of 
missiles from the city, but in spite of it the Danes 
at last were able to bring up the three rams close 
to the bridge-head and again to destroy the tower. 

The French had prepared great forked beams 
with which they caught the heads of the rams, and 
they had also built great stone-throwing machines 
that hurled rocks of such size that they struck down 
the mantelets and killed the men underneath. 

After three days the Danes were driven back, 
having lost heavily in men, and leaving two of their 
rams disabled. The fight at the bridge, meanwhile, 
had been fierce; and at one time the Danes nearly 
succeeded in burning it down by means of three fire 
vessels towed against it. But the piles of stone on 
which the bridge was supported kept the vessels 
from getting near enough to set it in flames, and 
the accurate marksmanship of the French engi- 
neers soon sunk the vessels by hurling rocks upon 
them. 

So far the besiegers had failed at every point, 
but a few days later heavy rains had so swollen 

[155] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

the rivers that the flood carried away part of the 
northern bridge, leaving twelve unfortunate 
French soldiers cut off in the tower. When the 
Danes discovered how weakly the tower was de- 
fended, they pushed a wagon full of straw against 
the gate. The defenders of the tower were too few 
to drive the Danes away, and the smoke from the 
burning cart prevented much damage from the en- 
gines upon the walls of the city. The upper part of 
the tower was soon in flames, and the French were 
forced to take to the broken bridge. 

It is said that the Danes professed admiration 
for these brave men, promising to spare them if 
they should surrender, but as soon as the twelve 
men were disarmed, they were slaughtered and 
flung into the river. The Danes now sent some of 
their vessels through the broken bridge, probably 
to get provisions, and there came a lull in the siege. 

During this time the French sent out a party to 
seize and burn the deserted camp, but found it still 
guarded by a heavy force and were compelled to 
retreat. 

But in return for the good fortune of the be- 
siegers, there now came help for the besieged. The 
Duke of Saxony appeared with reinforcements, the 
Danes retired into their camp, and the relieving 

[156] 



SIEGE OF PARIS 

force were able to put stores into the city, and prob- 
ably to strengthen the garrison. Then the tower on 
the bridge was taken and rebuilt while the Danes 
still remained in their camp. The Duke of Saxony 
made an attack upon the Danes' fortified camp, but 
was driven off and marched away from the city, 
possibly because there were not provisions enough 
for the citizens and for his men had they remained. 

Some of the Danes now crossed the river to the 
southern side, and after a dispute among their 
leaders it was resolved to make one last attempt to 
take the city. Bringing up their boats, they landed 
men at the foot of the city walls, and also sent forces 
against the two bridge towers; but all of these at- 
tacks were driven off, and one of their leaders, Sieg- 
fried, consented to give up the siege, after receiving 
sixty pounds of silver. 

Another leader, however, continued it, hoping 
for success because a pestilence had broken out in 
the city and one of the chief defenders, the Bishop, 
was dead. No very vigorous attempt to take the 
city was made, except one attack in which the 
Danes reached the city walls on the island, climbed 
at one point over the wall by means of ladders, but 
were driven back by the defenders before a stronger 
force could come to their aid. 

[157] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

After this attack a second relieving army ap- 
peared, fought its way into the city, and reported 
that an army of the French was coming to the res- 
cue. But before Charles the Fat had brought up 
this force, the Danes made a grand attack, concen- 
trating tremendous fire upon the walls of the city 
from their engines, and at the same moment at- 
tempting to climb upon the bridges and the island 
wall by the use of scaling-ladders, as well as to burn 
the wooden tower at the head of the northern 
bridge, which was now protected by a sort of fort 
of heavy timbers. They almost succeeded in burn- 
ing this fortification, but the attack failed here 
and everywhere else. 

Not long after this failure, Charles the Fat came 
up with a large army and bribed the Danes to pass 
by and to march into Burgundy, where they made 
another unsuccessful attempt at besieging the city 
of Sens. 

The effect of these successive attempts to hold cit- 
ies against the Northmen was gradually to encour- 
age the French against their attacks thereafter. 
Oman calls attention to the fact that these so-called 
" barbarians " used in the siege all the engines of 
war that had been known to the Romans, which it 

[158] 




B 

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g 

'5b 

.Si 

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biD 
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SIEGE OF PARIS 

is believed they had learned from their enemies. But 
against this display of knowledge is to be set the 
stupidity with which they failed to surround the 
city and to prevent its being relieved. If the Danes 
had been able or willing to build a strong set of 
siege -works around the city, so as to cut it off 
from receiving provisions or reinforcements, they 
would no doubt have captured the town. 

Although in passing from this old siege by the 
Danes to the siege of Antioch by the Crusaders we 
go over more than two centuries, we shall not note 
any great advance in the art of the besieger. The 
Crusaders were not in any sense learned in the his- 
tory of the past. Their warfare had little of science, 
and though they made use of some of the better 
known siege apparatus, yet we find in their books 
upon sieges little that is new. Usually their con- 
quests were by force of numbers and brute strength. 
Often their plans were defeated by their jealousies 
of one another, but the taking of Antioch gives at 
least a good idea of how the Crusaders fought, both 
before the city walls and in the open fields. 



[159] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH, 1097 A.D. 

THE siege of this city, in Syria, is notable as 
the first in which the Crusaders had all 
agreed to act together for the common 
good, since they had found in former battles and 
sieges that the jealousy of different commanders 
and bodies of troops had brought disaster. 

Antioch lies in a valley on the Orontes River, 
about eastward of the Island of Cyprus and ten 
miles from the shore of the Mediterranean. It was 
surrounded by a double wall, guarded by four hun- 
dred and fifty powers, and, in addition, there was 
one stronghold, or citadel, against the southern 
wall. The river ran along the length of the north- 
western wall, departing from it more widely as one 
went eastward, and leaving a broad triangular 
plain just to the north of the city. 

Against this great fortification marched an army 
of three hundred thousand men, the strength of 
which was mainly in its mounted knights in chain 
mail. The Turks, who then held the city, before the 
coming of the Crusaders had turned most of the 

[160] 




An Army of Crusaders 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

Christians out of the city, retaining their wives and 
children as hostages to prevent them from joining 
the enemy. They had strengthened the fortifications 
as much as possible, had collected ample stores, and 
within the city they could command a force of per- 
haps twenty-five thousand men, six or seven thou- 
sand being horsemen. 

The Christian army marched upon the city on 
October 21, 1097, saluted the City of the Strong 
Walls with shouts and the blasts of trumpets, to 
which no response came from the silent Turks. 
Marching to the plain northward of the city, the 
Crusaders spent fifteen days in bringing in provi- 
sions and cattle from the surrounding country, de- 
stroying the farms and houses round about, felling 
trees and bringing together a great mass of mate- 
rial with which to build themselves a camp. It 
seemed as if they were about to found a town in 
the valley before the walls. Not only did they make 
shelters and erect tents, but the multitude of camp 
followers, men and women, some of the very worst 
description, erected booths and houses of entertain- 
ment as if preparing for a great fair. 

There seems to have been little military disci- 
pline. Luxury and riot ruled everywhere. Fruits, 
corn, cattle, had been brought in in such profusion 

[161] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

that the men disdained to eat any but the choicest 
portions of food or to drink anything but costly 
wines. It seemed as if the vast host had gathered 
for a disgraceful merrymaking. No thought was 
given to the Turks in the besieged town, the sur- 
render of which they thought would take place 
daily. Yet of all the gates of Antioch, the besiegers 
commanded but three, all those upon the southern 
side of the city being open, enabling the Turks to 
communicate with their friends outside. 

In order to procure forage for the thousands of 
horses in the knights' camp, parties were sent across 
the Orontes River to range about the country; but 
the Turks, noticing this, one day made a sally, fell 
upon the foragers, and slew great numbers of them 
before they could recross the river. To make this 
attack, the Turks had crossed a bridge to the west- 
ward of the Crusaders' camp, but instead of trying 
at first to put a force to guard this bridge, the Cru- 
saders built a floating bridge laid upon boats back 
of their own camp. Though this made the retreat 
of the foragers easy, it did not prevent the Turks 
from sending out strong parties of horsemen across 
their bridge to the westward to fall by night upon 
the disorderly Christian camp. 

A party of Crusaders at last made an attack 

[162] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

upon the stone bridge, but owing to its strength 
and the vigorous resistance of the Turkish sol- 
diers, they were unable to destroy it. It was then 
resolved to build a strong wooden fortification, like 
a great tower, and to roll it to a position from which 
it could command the stone bridge and keep the 
Turks from crossing. If this bridge could be 
guarded, the besiegers could not readily be at- 
tacked, since the ground between them and the 
Turks was so wet and boggy that the Turkish 
horsemen could not readily cross it. 

The great tower was built and slowly moved into 
position to command the Turkish bridge. Hardly 
had it been put in place when a strong force of 
Turkish horsemen dashed out of the bridge gate, 
charged upon the newly constructed tower, drove 
back its guards, and set the tower on fire. 

In order to prevent another such attack, the 
Christians now placed before the bridge a battery 
of machines for throwing darts and stones, so 
placed that a heavy fire could be opened upon the 
bridge. So long as these machines were in action, 
the Turks remained safely behind their walls, but 
as soon as the fire slackened the light Turkish cav- 
alry, with sword and spear, swarmed out again like 
flies, and gave the besiegers no rest. 

[163] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

The reason why these machines were not used to 
batter down the Turkish defences was simply that 
they were not powerful enough to make any im- 
pression upon the enormous walls, which had been 
constructed by the Roman Emperor, Justinian. 

It was now decided by the Christian leaders that 
the only way to prevent these sallies from the bridge 
gate was to block up the bridge by masses of ma- 
sonry. So, while a heavy fire was directed upon the 
bridge, workmen carried great stones to the bridge 
head and succeeded at last in blocking it up so as 
to prevent the Turkish horsemen from using it. 

But as there was still another gate to the west- 
ward, the only result of blocking up this bridge 
gate was to make the Turks go a little longer way 
round. The attacks of the swift horsemen, who, on 
their lighter chargers could easily distance the heavy 
Christian horsemen, still continued and caused 
great losses among the parties who were forced to 
cross the bridge of boats northward of the Cru- 
saders' camp in order to get forage for the horses. 
Many battles and skirmishes took place at this float- 
ing bridge of boats, and many lost their lives here 
owing to the failure of the Crusaders to station a 
force in front of each of the gates of the city. 

All this minor fighting was entirely useless and 

[164] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

brought them no nearer to the capture of Antioch. 
Meanwhile time was passing, and to the plenty and 
wastefulness of the early days had succeeded want 
and bitter famine. The parties sent out for pro- 
visions were frequently driven back or slain by 
Turkish horsemen. Finally eatables became so 
scarce and prices in the camp so high that the rich 
could hardly buy the simplest food, and the poorer 
pilgrims lived on the merest scraps or even gnawed 
upon leather and the soft bark of trees. Sickness 
followed the famine; thousands died and with dif- 
ficulty were buried; the knights' horses were re- 
duced from seventy thousand to two thousand; the 
rainy season came, when the huts and tents could 
not protect the miserable Crusaders; and every day 
that passed added to their misery and desolation. 

As it never rains but it pours, during this wet 
and depressing season the Crusaders were made 
still more despondent by the news that a prince of 
Denmark, named Sweno, who had set out to join 
them with a force of fifteen hundred pilgrims and 
accompanied by his promised bride, Fiorina, daugh- 
ter of the Duke of Burgundy, had been attacked 
just as he encamped, one evening, by an overwhelm- 
ing force of Turks, and his forces slain to the last 
man. 

[165] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

This painful news brought despair to many al- 
ready discouraged, and the faint-hearted began to 
steal away. Robert of Normandy withdrew to Lao- 
dicea, and only came back after much persuasion. 
A Greek leader named Tactitius, true to his name, 
pretended to depart for supplies and was no more 
seen on the field. Peter the Hermit, to whose fren- 
zied preaching the expedition was due, was one of 
the refugees, but after being overtaken by the great 
Prince Tancred and soundly scolded by another 
great Crusader, Bohemund, the preacher was for- 
given without punishment — in which he was more 
fortunate than his companion, who was compelled 
as a penance to stand all night in the pouring rain 
at the door of Bohemund's tent. The Duke of Lor- 
raine, one of their strongest leaders, now fell ill, 
and a council was called to see whether the siege 
should be given up. 

Though almost in despair, it was decided to make 
one more attempt to procure provisions ; and a small 
army of two thousand horsemen and sixteen thou- 
sand foot soldiers went out on a foraging expedi- 
tion to get provisions. Though they collected a fair 
store, as they were returning to their camp the alert 
Turkish forces rushed upon them and took from 
them what they had so painfully gathered, except 

[166] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

just enough to supply the starving camp for a 
few days. 

Instead of blaming themselves for their waste- 
fulness and lack of foresight, Providence was 
blamed for their misfortunes as was the way in 
those times; and this opinion was strengthened by 
the shock of an earthquake and the appearance of 
strange lights in the northern skies. A bishop, who 
was the Pope's legate, ordained a solemn fast of 
three days for the starving Crusaders, and there fol- 
lowed processions, masses, and psalm-singing, to- 
gether with the enforcing of strict rules against 
gambling, drinking, and all other evil doing. 

All the camp-followers and women were ordered 
from the camp, and for the first time there seemed 
to be some hope that the Christian soldiers would 
attend strictly to the business of the war. One of- 
fending monk received what the Middle Ages con- 
sidered a fair trial, being made to walk, blindfold, 
over a piece of ground where pieces of red-hot 
iron had been placed. As he was unlucky enough 
to burn his toes, it was believed that Heaven had 
convicted him of guilt, and he was severely whipped 
and led in a disgraceful " rogue's march " around 
the camp. 

These things did little to help in taking the city; 

[167] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

but to prove that they were in earnest, the Cru- 
saders now ploughed and planted great patches of 
ground within sight of the walls, to convince the 
Turks that they meant to fight it out even if they 
had to take to farming to support themselves. These 
things, at all events, restored the Crusaders' cour- 
age, and their confidence grew as the weather be- 
gan to become warmer and supplies to be brought 
into the camp. 

It was soon seen that whatever the Christians de- 
vised promptly became known to the Turks, for 
the camp was full of spies. Among the Syrians 
from the country round about who came to sell pro- 
visions many Turkish spies mingled, and reported 
every measure taken against the city. 

Bohemund, knowing that they could not detect 
these intruders, determined to scare them away. 
He ordered that two of the Turkish prisoners 
should be slain, cut in pieces, and portions of their 
bodies roasted by his cooks. To all inquirers the 
cooks were told to say that it was the intention of 
the Crusaders to devour the bodies of all Turks or 
spies taken in the camp. The horrified spies one by 
one stole away, telling the awful story of the Cru- 
saders' cannibalism, and this frightful tale soon 
spread throughout the East. There still exist old 

[168] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

ballads relating such barbarities, probably without 
any better foundation than this ghastly trick played 
by Bohemund upon the spies. 

Not long afterward there came an embassy from 
Egypt representing a faction of the Mohammedans 
opposed to the party holding Antioch against the 
Crusaders, and offering an alliance against the com- 
mon enemy. To entertain these ambassadors the 
camp was gaily decorated, the soldiers all arrayed 
in their best, and games, races, and knightly con- 
tests took place for their entertainment. These de- 
tails show the difference between the warfare of the 
Crusaders and that of the ancients, as well as be- 
tween those times and ours. It seemed that the Cru- 
saders were glad of anything to distract their at- 
tention from the task of overcoming the besieged 
city; and yet they knew that there was danger of 
a relieving army appearing unless they could soon 
finish their task. 

Hardly had the merry-makings come to an end 
when couriers came riding at full speed to the camp 
to announce that a large force of Turks was march- 
ing to relieve their besieged brethren. To meet these 
the chivalrous knights sent only a small force, who 
made their way hastily to a narrow pass through 
which the relieving army must march. This defile 

[169] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

lay between the River Orontes and a large lake, 
and the ground around it consisted of little hills 
and valleys among which it was easy to conceal 
bodies of men. 

Bohemund had seen the advantages of this posi- 
tion, and when he was told of the advance of the 
Turkish army (which consisted of from twelve to 
twenty-eight thousand men, according to various 
accounts) the Crusaders gathered all their best 
mounted and most effective men, but could get 
together no more than seven hundred knights. Of 
course the strength of the knights' charges de- 
pended upon the condition of their horses; and 
no more than this small number of men could be 
provided with steeds strong enough for the night 
march and the fight that was to follow, although 
the field was only about seven miles from the city. 

Having reached the pass, the knights awaited 
the dawn, and just at daylight the Turkish lancers 
were seen advancing, preceded by vast numbers of 
archers on horseback. As soon as the Turks had en- 
tered the narrow pass, the Crusaders formed in five 
squadrons, with one held in reserve, and charged 
upon the Turkish van. 

Had the attack been made in open ground, the 
Turks, according to their usual custom, would have 

[170] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

swung in both ends of their long line upon the small 
body of horsemen and completely surrounded them. 
In this narrow pass the foremost Turks, driven 
back by the heavier horsemen charging with their 
lances in rest, fell back upon the advancing line, 
threw the army into disorder, and in a few minutes 
the battle was over and the Turks in full retreat. 
Over two thousand Turks were drowned in the lake 
or river, and the seven hundred Christian knights 
pursued the retreating foe so vigorously that be- 
fore night they had reached the camp of the vast 
Turkish army and captured it with all the baggage. 

Riding back in triumph, the knights carried 
with them hundreds of the Turkish warriors' heads, 
and, instead of being gladdened by the sight of the 
relieving army, the garrison within the town were 
informed of its defeat by showers of their country- 
men's heads which were shot from the military 
machines over the walls. Warfare in those days was 
a grim matter. 

It was now February, 1098. In the following 
month the same tactics were repeated when the 
Turks from within the city came charging across 
the bridge into the plain, intending to dash upon 
the Christian camp. Once more the heavy charge 
of the knights with their long lances threw the 

[171] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

lighter horsemen of the Turks into disorder, and 
since the river was at their backs, they could neither 
retreat nor re-form, and hundreds of them were 
slain or captured. 

There was about this time another fierce battle 
before the walls in which a party of Genoese, bring- 
ing provisions to the Christians, were defeated by 
the Turks; and then the Turks in turn were at- 
tacked by the Crusaders from the camp and routed 
with great loss as they attempted to retreat again 
into the city. In fact, so narrow was the Turks' es- 
cape that only the coming of night prevented the 
Christians from forcing their way into the city. 

During this fight an incident occurred which 
shows the bodily strength of some of these powerful 
knights. A gigantic Turk, who had already slain 
several of the Christians, charged against the Duke 
of Lorraine, who, with a single blow, cut the Turk's 
body off at the waist. This ghastly exploit was wit- 
nessed from the walls of the town, and we are told 
that " the air resounded with the cries and lamenta- 
tions of the old men, women, and children, who 
stood on the walls." 

These victories, though they made the Christians 
safer, did little to hasten the siege; and the next 
work of the Christians seemed likely to turn it into 

[172] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

a mere blockade. They built to the eastward and 
westward of the town two tall castles, with a strong 
force to guard each to prevent the attacks of the 
Turks, and also to shut in that part of the city 
which up to this time had been unguarded. 

Now that everything seemed to smile upon the 
Crusaders, the timid came flocking back to camp. 
There was no longer any danger of sallies from the 
town in force, but now and then small bodies of 
Turks would charge upon the Crusaders who ven- 
tured too far from their camps. Thus they captured 
and slew a German count who was carelessly 
amusing himself by playing dice with a noble- 
woman at the edge of a wood too near the city 
walls. 

One pilgrim whom they took was ordered to beg 
for ransom from the walls of the city, but instead 
of begging for release, the hero cried from the 
battlements, " Be steady and persevere, for all the 
chiefs of the enemy are fallen, and no one remains 
to lead them with vigour and understanding! " By 
this defiance he lost his life. 

Now famine began to be felt in the town, while 
in the Crusaders' camp there was again plenty ; but 
since no steps were taken to force their way into 
the city, the siege might have lasted for weeks or 

[173] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

months longer had it not been for the treachery of 
one of the leaders within the walls. Having been 
compelled to give up a store of provisions he had 
collected for his own family, he secretly sent word 
to Bohemund offering to admit the besiegers. Bo- 
hemund, concealing the treacherous offer, tried to 
get from his fellow knights the promise that the 
town should belong to whichever of the Christian 
princes should bring about its capture. But they 
maintained that this was contrary to their agree- 
ment to act together, and so Bohemund did not re- 
veal the secret of his power to take the city. 

News came that a second relieving army was 
gathering, and again the flight from the camp 
commenced, causing the princes to make a decree 
that death should be the penalty for desertion, and 
that all should take an oath to persevere for four- 
teen years, if necessary, to take the town. The ap- 
proach of this Turkish force enabled Bohemund to 
make terms with the rest. They reluctantly agreed 
that the town should belong to him who brought 
about its fall, and word was sent to the traitor with- 
in that his offer to give up the stronghold would be 
accepted. 

With every day had arisen suspicion of treachery 
among the Turks, and this traitor, Pyrrhus, was 

[174] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

one of those called to council in an effort to discover 
the treason. He boldly advised that all those in 
charge of the gates should on the next day sur- 
render their offices to others — which he could safely 
do, since he had made arrangements to give up 
the town the very night of the council! 

A large number of Christian soldiers pretended 
to march away from the town just at nightfall, 
while a strong force was secretly brought around 
to the foot of the tower where Pyrrhus was in com- 
mand. After some delay, a cord was lowered from 
the tower, a rope ladder drawn up, and a few of the 
Christians admitted. Just then the ladder broke, 
and no other was to be had. But meanwhile those 
at the foot of the wall succeeded in bursting open 
a small gate or doorway, and having taken the 
Turks by surprise, they drove the defenders from 
the walls and were soon in possession of ten of the 
towers that commanded them. Before the Turks 
could gather and resist this small party, the Chris- 
tians had forced their way to the bridge-gate just 
to the westward of the Crusaders' camp and thrown 
it open. The Christian knights who were lying in 
wait poured into the city, their banners were hoisted 
on the walls, and in a single day ten thousand of 
the inhabitants were slain. 

[175] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Thus fell Antioch, after seven months, by the 
treachery of one of its defenders. And this is the 
end of the story of the siege, although shortly after- 
ward the relieving army arrived, surrounded the 
city, and besieged the Christians in turn. The Cru- 
saders were reduced almost to despair and saved 
finally only by what they believed to be a miracle. 
A certain priest dreamed that the lance that pierced 
the Saviour's side was buried in the Church of St. 
Peter. Though the papal legate refused to believe 
the story, under the direction of Bohemund the 
lance was sought for and found, buried twelve feet 
in the ground. This relic so excited the enthusiasm 
of the Christian soldiers that they fought with irre- 
sistible courage. The gates were thrown open, and 
as the clergy upon the walls waved their crosses, 
singing the psalm, " Let God arise, and let His 
enemies be scattered!" the Crusaders shouting 
" God wills it! " marched upon the great host of the 
Turks and put them to flight, assisted, so the legend 
ran, by three heavenly knights in glittering ar- 
mour and white raiment. This was the last attempt 
to relieve the city of Antioch. 

This account shows us that in the science of tak- 
ing cities, the Crusaders were far inferior to the 

[176] 



SIEGE OF ANTIOCH 

Romans of the Empire. Comparing the siege of 
Jerusalem by Titus with this siege of Antioch 
might lead one to think that the dates of the two 
should be reversed, and yet Titus lived in the first 
century, and Tancred a thousand years later! 

But the weapons and the equipment of the Ro- 
mans were as good as those of the Crusaders, and 
their learning was greater. When the days of gun- 
powder began, all was changed; but there were to 
be five centuries and more of warfare before gun- 
powder reached a place in military art that put 
the knights hopelessly into the past. 



[177] 



THE FOURTH PERIOD 

Siege of Orleans, 1428 
Siege of Constantinople, 1453 
Siege of Rhodes, 1522 



[178] 
[179] 
[180] 



THE FOURTH PERIOD 

THIS is the time of a truly effective fire- 
arm. Although at first the new weapon was 
neither effective nor in widespread use, yet 
the results of its introduction were great. In the 
Middle Ages the knight in armour had been almost 
beyond harm at the hands of the foot soldier. His 
equipment was very costly, and he may be com- 
pared to a great battleship in modern times in 
that he was sluggish in movement, could be used 
only for important matters, but once in action was 
most destructive. When, however, the firearms were 
really effective, the value of the knight in armour 
rapidly decreased. Gradually the destructiveness of 
firearms against the charging bodies of horsemen 
increased, and the uselessness of wearing armour 
was evident. 

It may be that the downfall of the mediaeval 
knight was caused, or at least hastened, by the re- 
sults of certain battles in which the free Switzer had 
shown that a brave body of infantry who would hold 
their ground with the spear or pike could not be 

[181] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

broken by the charges of the armoured cavalrymen. 
At all events, during all this period of the coming 
in of gunpowder we see a gradual increase in the 
value of the foot-soldier and the passing away of 
the mounted knight. Then, when the feudal lords 
could no longer rely upon their power in the open 
field, the siege of castles again began, and gradu- 
ally cannon gained in effectiveness until they could 
readily batter down even the strongest masonry. 

Again, when cannon could shoot heavy shot from 
a great distance, the old style of fortification had 
to be given up, for it had been found that even a 
slight earthwork formed a better resistance against 
cannon balls than great masonry walls unsupport- 
ed by earth embankments. As the range of cannon 
became greater, armies had to begin their siege- 
works farther and farther away from the walls of 
the place they meant to take ; charges could be made 
only after the guns upon the walls had been silenced 
by killing the artillerymen or dismounting the can- 
non. Every approach against a well-fortified place 
had to be made under cover, and the sort of defence 
most quickly constructed and most effective against 
cannon and firearms was the trench — along the 
edge of which the earth taken out in making the 
trench was piled for additional protection. Against 

[ 182] 



THE FOURTH PERIOD 

these protections dug deep down into the earth, was 
invented the art of vertical firing, that is, of firing 
high into the air at such an angle as would cause 
the cannon-ball to drop into the trench. Against 
this sort of firing the besiegers were forced to con- 
struct underground protections, burrows, or bomb- 
proof enclosures. All this brought about a new 
science of besieging, based upon the system of 
trenches dug, one after the other, nearer and nearer 
to the fortifications. And with each new idea in at- 
tack was developed some new way of meeting it on 
the part of the defenders. All this did away entirely 
with the old system based upon the gradual ap- 
proach above ground. 

The siege of Orleans shows a mixture of the old 
and new methods of fighting. Knights in armour, 
foot-soldiers with spears, artillery of the ancient 
kinds, and cannon firing iron shot — all appear in 
the defence and attack of the French city against 
the English. 



[183 1 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS IN 1428 

THE city of Orleans, like other mediaeval 
towns, was really a great fortress. Around 
it, besides the wall and the deep moats, had 
been built thirty-four great towers, enormously 
thick at the base, where they were almost solid 
stone, and rising three stories into the air. These, as 
well as the walls, were loopholed so that archers 
might shoot upon a besieging army from win- 
dows that were narrow on the inside but broadened 
toward the outside so that they would give those 
inside a wide view and the arrows would reach a 
wide space. 

The great importance of the fortress to French 
and to English lay in the fact that it was the last 
stronghold which still held out against the triumph- 
ant English armies. Besides this, it guarded the 
River Loire, and once the English had passed this 
river it would not be long before the whole of 
France would be in their power, since they already 
held all the north in league with the Burgundians. 

[184] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

Across the river ran a stone bridge, the head of 
which on the farther side was guarded by towers 
called Les Tourelles, or as we should say, ' The 
Turrets." On the town side of the bridge were 
large bastilles, great round towers, powerful for- 
tresses that had been built eleven years before to 
protect the town against the English Henry V. 
The people of Orleans had been able to hold their 
town against the conqueror of Agincourt, for 
Henry had not the strength to carry on a long 
siege. 

The English, under the command of Lord Salis- 
bury, had taken every town in the neighbourhood, 
and their forces filled the valley of the Loire both 
above and below Orleans. When he sought to take 
this last stronghold of the French, men and women, 
even children and the clergy, worked with a will to 
strengthen the fortifications, to provide ammuni- 
tion, to place upon the walls the cannon and the 
catapults, for this siege took place before cannon 
had become so accurate in fire and so long in range 
that the old-fashioned war machines were driven 
into disuse. 

On October 12, 1428, the English crossed the 
river and drew up their forces in front of the 
stone bridge. To prevent too near an approach 

[185] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

to the defences the French had torn down all the 
neighbouring houses, and also a great convent, 
which might serve as cover to their foes. The 
English, however, built new defences on the site 
of the convent, and soon had placed a battery where 
it could fire huge stones against the turrets that 
guarded the bridge-head. Stones, roughly rounded, 
were in those days quite as commonly, or more com- 
monly used than iron shot. 

So passed the first week. Then came a brave as- 
sault that lasted for four hours, in which the Eng- 
lish tried to capture the first Tourelles. Against 
the English soldiers fought not only the French 
men-at-arms, but even the women. They threw 
missiles down upon the English soldiers, who, in 
their pointed steel caps and chain armour protected 
by their shields, came to little harm, but could not 
force their way into the turrets at the head of the 
bridge. 

No doubt this English attack was meant only to 
mask their more serious attempt underground, for 
it was soon discovered that mines had been dug 
beneath the turrets and it was useless to attempt 
to hold them. Consequently the French abandoned 
this part of their defences, moving along the bridge 
to smaller towers that were built half-way over the 

[186] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

river. At the same time they exploded a mine that 
had been placed ready beneath two arches of the 
stone bridge farther back, and by blowing these 
into the air, they cut off the portion captured by the 
English. In place of the destroyed arches the 
French put a wooden drawbridge, so that when 
they should be driven back by the advances of the 
English they could raise their drawbridge to pre- 
vent their enemies from crossing. But the English 
commander, Salisbury, did not try to capture the 
rest of the bridge, being satisfied to hold the head 
of it and thus to keep the French from using it for 
making sallies or receiving provisions. The south 
side of the town had no bridge. 

On the day of this assault, Salisbury climbed into 
the captured towers to view Orleans from this point 
of vantage. As the commander gazed over the ram- 
parts, and just as one of his officers was saying, 
"My lord, behold your city!" suddenly a cannon 
was discharged from the walls, mortally wounding 
the English commander. It is said that this was a 
mere chance-shot fired by a boy, who, finding the 
cannon loaded and ready at the noon hour, touched 
a match to it and then ran away. In Shakespeare's 
play, " King Henry VI, Part I," Salisbury is in- 
troduced as saying : 

[187] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Here, through this grate, I count each one, 
And view the Frenchmen how they fortify: 

Let me have your express opinions 

Where is best place to make our battery next. 

While those with him are replying, the shot comes 
from the wall and Salisbury falls with a wound 
from which he soon died. 

Just afterward in the drama is announced the 
coming of La Pucelle, the Maid of Orleans. 
Shakespeare, too, declares the shot was fired by a 
boy, who is introduced in the play with the French 
master-gunner, Maitre Jean, a real character, 
noted for his marksmanship. This French gunner 
is represented in the play as having discovered that 
the English leader was accustomed to inspect the 
town from a certain grating and as having trained 
a cannon upon that loophole. He leaves his son to 
watch and to fire the piece upon discovering the 
English. 

The death of the English leader caused the siege 
to slacken until the celebrated English soldiers Tal- 
bot and Lord Scales took command and vigorous- 
ly pressed the siege once more. There followed a 
vigorous bombardment between besiegers and be- 
sieged in which the French master-gunner is said 

[188] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

to have greatly distinguished himself by being able 
infallibly to shoot down those English leaders who 
exposed themselves. 

Though it was in the early days of cannonading, 
both fired heavy shot of more than a hundred 
pounds in weight, but the French gunners were 
the more skilful. So the siege dragged on with little 
progress, the forces of the English being increased 
by reinforcements until they had some forty-five 
hundred men. The French had about as many, but 
seemed to be afraid of making any determined at- 
tack upon the English troops in spite of the fact 
that all the French men-at-arms were veteran sol- 
diers. It was not until February, 1429, that any se- 
rious fighting took place. This was the so-called 
" Battle of the Herrings," won by the English. 
This battle emboldened the English, and they be- 
gan to strengthen the line of fortresses about the 
city until they had completely surrounded it and 
were able to bombard it from every side. 

The town, meanwhile, was suffering from fam- 
ine, and it seemed that surrender could not long 
be delayed unless aid should arrive from outside. 
It was when things were in this state that the re- 
lieving force under Joan of Arc marched to the 
city. How many troops she had with her is not 

[189] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

known, but there must have been from seven to 
twelve thousand — enough, one would think, to have 
driven the English from their lines even without 
the miraculous aid of Joan. 

She had gathered her forces at the town of Blois, 
which is a few miles down stream on the same river 
as Orleans, and here many waggons were loaded 
with provisions and followed in the train of her 
army, to relieve the starving city. 

At last all was ready and the Maid, banner in 
hand, led her army out of Blois, singing a solemn 
chant in a grand chorus as if the march were a re- 
ligious procession. Two nights they camped in the 
fields, and on the third day came in sight of the 
walls and towers of the besieged city. She had di- 
rected that the march should be directly to Orleans 
itself, but the officers thought it wiser to march on 
the southern side of the Loire River, so that they 
might be safer from the large part of the English 
army that was on the northern side. 

Thus they saw before them, when they halted, the 
tall siege-towers of the English army around the 
head of the fortified bridge, while beyond the river 
were the walls and towers of Orleans, and still be- 
yond were others of the sixty fortresses that the 
English had erected in circuit about the town. Joan 

[190] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

no doubt saw at a glance that no one of these towers 
could hold many English, for she advised that the' 
nearest should be attacked, so that the French could 
ford the river and at once enter Orleans. 

Again the officers overruled the Maid, and the 
forces were marched eastward along the river four 
miles to a ford where were some small islands. These 
islands were used as the landing-place for provi- 
sions sent to Orleans, and to them boats came to 
bring the supplies left there. Dunois, the French 
commander of Orleans, had come out to meet Joan 
and her forces, and while he was explaining that the 
wind prevented the arrival of the Orleans boats, 
Joan predicted that the wind would change, and 
that the boats would come and return in safety. This 
all happened. The supplies were carried to the 
broken bridge, and Joan and her party were ferried 
to the north side. When darkness came, they found 
their way to Orleans, and were admitted amid wild- 
est rejoicings. 

Lighted by torches, a great crowd thronged 
around to see Joan and her knights, who was so 
pressed upon that one of the torches set fire to 
Joan's sacred banner in her very hand. She went 
straight to the cathedral to give thanks for her suc- 
cessful entry, and then sought rest with her attend- 

[191] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

ants in the home of the Duke of Orleans's treas- 
urer. 

Joan's arrival brought hope and food. Both gave 
new courage to the hungry and the fearful. Du- 
nois, the commander, said that after her coming the 
French soldiers no longer feared the English, but 
were eager to attack. Even before Joan gave the 
word, four hundred French charged out and drove 
back a strong force of the English, but this led to 
nothing further. The officers were not willing that 
Joan should lead an attack. 

The Maid seemed to hope the English would 
yield without fighting. She sent messengers and let- 
ters, but these were scorned. She went out upon the 
bridge, and summoned Glansdale, who commanded 
the English in the captured tower, to surrender. 
Though she was laughed at and insulted, none shot 
at her. When her summons was scorned, she told 
the English that they would soon be driven back 
but that Glansdale would not go with them. 

While Joan was encouraging the French, Du- 
nois had gone to Blois for the rest of the relieving 
army, and arrived in time to persuade them to fol- 
low him to Orleans — a step which most of those in 
command at Blois opposed. 

On the second of May, Joan led a great throng 

[192] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

from the city and examined the English siege- 
towers and forts ; and two days later she rode bold- 
ly through the English lines to meet Dunois and the 
coming troops, and then marched back with them. 
The English, though the stronger force, did not 
attack; perhaps the soldiers were too superstitious 
to face an army led by a white-robed " sorceress," 
for such they called her. So the reinforcements came 
safely to Orleans. 

Joan knew that the English, too, were expecting 
aid. Sir John Fastolfe was on the march with sol- 
diers and supplies, and she besought Dunois to give 
her instant word of his arrival. But he failed, and 
one day she was sleeping when she heard cannon 
firing. She sprang to her feet, was armed by the 
women, and receiving her banner through the win- 
dow spurred at full speed toward the fighting. On 
the way she passed men carrying wounded, and was 
full of grief and pity. But she rode bravely to the 
field of battle, and gave orders that the French 
should see that no aid came from the other English 
towers to the one attacked — the tower of St. Loup. 

On foot and banner in hand she encouraged the 
French, and despite an attempt to reinforce the 
English, the tower of St. Loup was taken, and its 
defenders captured or slain. 

[193] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

When returning in triumph she told the rejoic- 
ing people that in five days' time they would be 
freed of the enemy, not one Englishman being left 
before the walls ; and they believed her. That night 
the bells were rung in sign of their joy over the first 
success. 

Next day Joan tied to an arrow shot into the 
English lines a letter saying this was her third 
and last demand that they should depart; but no 
answering letter came. 

The day after this success was a church-day, and 
Joan passed the time in religious observances. On 
the following day the French were led to attack the 
English position at the Bastille or Tower of the Au- 
gustinians. This tower was most important as it 
stood farther down the river than the bridge, and 
was near a little island which made it easy to cross 
to the towers on the opposite side of the river. If 
the Augustinian tower should be taken, the English 
would be left in two separate bodies with a river be- 
tween and no crossing place. 

The French crossed the river and landed on an 
island called St. Aignan. The English had not 
thought this worth guarding. But when the French 
had been carried in their boats to this island, and 
were gathered in force, they found themselves so 

[194] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

near the other shore that two boats put together 
made a bridge over which they could advance to the 
attack on the Tower of the Augustinians. But first 
they must take a smaller tower — St. Jean le Blanc, 
— the very one Joan had wished to capture when 
they first arrived from Blois. This tower the Eng- 
lish abandoned, setting it afire, and retreated to 
the stronger fort. 

After advancing boldly the French became 
frightened, fearing that a strong force of English 
would come from a neighbouring fort, and retreat- 
ed toward the river, Joan and her own company of 
knights following slowly. When the English came 
out after them, Joan's own party charged as the 
Maid, waving her banner, cried 'Follow me!' : 
This sudden attack amazed the English, the re- 
treating French came back, and the English were 
glad to return to their tower and fortifications. But 
the Maid and her knights followed closely, she 
planted her banner on the barricade, and a hand-to- 
hand struggle took place. Soon a breach was made 
in the barricade in the following manner. 

Joan's Steward, D'Aulon, was among those left 
to guard the river passage. As he and others stood 
there a " big, well-armed man-at-arms " came by. 
A Spanish soldier told this fellow he ought to help 

[195] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

guard the passage; whereupon the other said he 
would not do it. Then the Spaniard reproached the 
other, each began to " dare " the other, and finally 
they joined hands and rode toward the English bar- 
ricade — to see which would go farthest. Reaching 
the palisades, a big English knight met them at 
every point, and kept them back. Seeing this D'Au- 
lon pointed this Englishman out to Jean, the mas- 
ter-gunner. Now, Jean's cannon or culverin was on 
wheels, and probably had been taken to aid in the 
attack ; for it is said that he shot the English knight, 
and thus enabled the two soldiers (French and 
Spanish) to break through the barricade. The rest 
of the French followed, and soon after won the Fort 
or Tower of the Augustinians — the next to strong- 
est tower held by the besiegers. 

Joyfully the French encamped that night in and 
around the stronghold while Joan returned to her 
lodging in the city. Though only three thousand 
strong, they had taken three hundred prisoners, re- 
covered two hundred French prisoners, and slain a 
third of the English in the fortress. This was Joan's 
second victory, and the only strong position that re- 
mained was that before the bridge over the Loire — 
and this was the strongest of all. 

It was too late to attack on that day, and the 

[196] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

French officers were not anxious to fight at all, 
thinking that they could now wait for aid. Indeed, 
an officer came from their council to tell Joan 
of this resolve, and she replied: "You have been 
to your council and I have been to mine. And, be- 
lieve me, the counsel of God will be accomplished 
while yours will perish." Then Joan warned her 
priest or almoner to rise early, saying: " We shall 
have a hard day's work. Keep close to me, I shall 
have much to do; more and greater than I have 
ever had. I shall be wounded, my blood will flow 
from a wound higher than my breast." 

A letter exists, dated fifteen days earlier than 
the attack on the bridge towers, in which a French 
lord of Lyons mentions this prophecy as having 
been made, and Joan's priest Pasquerel swore to 
her making it to him again on the night before the 
attack. 

When early in the morning of Saturday, May 
7th, Joan rode to the gate, she found it had been 
ordered closed, and passage forbidden. Neverthe- 
less, saying, " You are doing wrong, and whether 
you wish it or not, my soldiers shall pass," she in- 
sisted upon going forth to the attack, and the gate 
was opened. 

Riding to the French outposts, the attack upon 

[197] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

the great bridge fortress began about six or seven 
o'clock, and the main body of the French came to 
the assistance of Joan and her knights. 

As this was the main position of the English, the 
struggle was most desperate. From the walls, the 
people of Orleans watched the struggle, and the 
artillery lent what aid it could, sending stones and 
iron shot against the towers. The English had now 
brought their whole strength to this point, and there 
was desperate fighting with spear, sword, lance, 
and bow. Both sides lost heavily. Again and again 
the French reached the ditch, crossed, put up lad- 
ders, and were driven back. 

For six hours or more the fierce fighting lasted, 
Joan in the very forefront, and urging on the men- 
at-arms. 

At length she helped to raise a long scaling lad- 
der against the tower, when a crossbowman, firing 
down upon her from the parapet, sent a bolt deep 
into her shoulder. She fell, and was hastily carried 
to the rear, while her comrades struggled on. Great 
was the triumph of the English over the " death ' : 
of the " sorceress," and as great the discouragement 
of the French, who struggled on with small hope 
of success. 

Joan meanwhile wept with pain and grief, but 

[198] 




Joan of Arc Wounded before Orleans 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

soon became quieter. She refused to have her wound 
" charmed," saying it would be a sin. Oil and lard 
were applied, and the bleeding stopped. But in her 
absence the attack went badly. The French were 
about to retire when Joan remounted her horse and 
begged for a little delay. She went into a vineyard, 
prayed, and then came forward to the attack bear- 
ing her banner. She rode to the very edge of the 
trench. 

Her reappearance, apparently from death it- 
self, terrified the English and redoubled the cour- 
age of her own soldiers. The French again rushed 
forward at all points, and soon the outer defences 
were taken, and then the French rushed to the 
towers. It was now about eight in the evening, and 
the English, in trying to retreat from the first 
tower to the second, fell from a broken bridge, that 
had been struck by a ball from the French artillery. 
Their leader, Glansdale, was in full armour, and 
went to the bottom of the river with many of his 
followers. 

Seeing the retreat, the French attacked the tow- 
ers from the stone bridge that connected them with 
Orleans, and in a panic the English yielded every- 
where, and their last stronghold was in the hands of 
the French. 

[199] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

This Joan had predicted even while her forces 
seemed to make no headway, saying: " When you 
see the wind drive my banner toward the fort, it 
will be yours. " After the victory the French entered 
Orleans by the stone bridge ; and this also the Maid 
had foretold when she set forth that morning. 

These prophecies are historic. 

All Orleans thronged to meet the victors, and 
together the rejoicing soldiers and citizens went in 
grand procession to the Cathedral, while the church 
bells rang, and kept on ringing through the night, 
and the joyful people betook themselves to giving 
thanks and making merry with bonfires, dancing, 
and songs. 

On the following day, Sunday, Joan was asked 
whether she would fight; but instead, when the 
armies, both French and English, were drawn up 
facing one another, she asked that the priests should 
celebrate the mass. When this was done, she de- 
manded whether " the English have their faces or 
their backs turned to us? " The English were seen 
to be turned in sullen retreat, and Joan said: " Let 
them depart, in God's name." 

Thus on May 8, 1429, after ten days of the 
Maid's presence, ended the siege begun October 12, 
1428. 

[200] 



SIEGE OF ORLEANS 

It was a marvellous achievement, and from it 
we may learn the power that comes in warfare to 
those who fight with belief in their leader, their 
cause, and themselves. The main strength of an 
army lies in its soul; and it was the souls of the 
French that followed the Peasant Martyr to vic- 
tory. 

If we learn this lesson from the siege of Orleans, 
we shall be fully warranted in including it among 
the great sieges of the world, though the science 
displayed on either side was far from unusual or 
remarkable. 



[201 ] 



THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 1453 

WE have already told the story of a suc- 
cessful attempt to hold Constantinople 
against the Eastern warriors in the 
year 717, when by the use of Greek fire the enemy's 
ships were burned and an attempt upon the sea wall 
of the city, by far the weakest side, was prevented. 

Over seven centuries later there came another 
attack against the great stronghold, which succeed- 
ed in wresting the city from the hands of the 
Christians. This was one of the most important 
sieges in the world's history, but it is not one that 
needs telling at great length, since it is only the 
story of the success of an overwhelming force 
against a few helpless and abandoned men. It was 
great because of its results on the world. 

The leader of this siege was Mohammed II, a 
youthful warrior who was only twenty-three at the 
time of the taking of the city. Having learned some- 
thing of its defenceless condition, Mohammed sent 
a force to build siegeworks just outside of Constan- 

[202] 



THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 

tinople. At once envoys from the city made formal 
protest against these hostile operations, but the pro- , 
test was not repeated, since Mohammed sent back 
the messengers with the threat to flay any others 
who came from the city. Then he leisurely com- 
pleted the building of his fortress, which in three 
months was fully completed and armed with heavy 
artillery. 

All being ready, Mohammed declared war against 
the Emperor Constantine, who then commanded a 
petty garrison of only six hundred Greek soldiers, 
far too few to extend even a fringe of armed men 
along the massive walls. 

Constantine had little hope of securing help, but 
having sent a despairing appeal for aid, he finally 
mustered some nine thousand men, and in April, 
1453, with this little force he confronted the Turk- 
ish expedition, which included a quarter of a million 
men and a naval force of four hundred and twenty 
vessels. 

A bombardment followed in which on both sides 
were employed not only ancient but modern artil- 
lery. The walls were subjected at the same time to 
the blows of great battering-rams, to stones flung 
from catapults, and to shot and shell from the heavi- 
est cannon that up to that time had been con- 

[203] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

structed. These cannon had been drawn to the siege 
on enormous platforms dragged by long trains of 
yoked oxen. 

Not only did the Turks attack the city on the 
side of the sea, but they carried their lighter craft 
across the land into the city's harbours on the nar- 
row strait to the northward, thus assaulting the city 
upon all three sides. 

For fifty-three days the city held out, but on May 
29th a general attack was made along the whole 
line, and the small garrison fell, bravely trying to 
defend the gates. The Emperor Constantine was 
killed, and the hordes of Turks came rushing into 
the city streets. The despairing people gathered in 
the great Church of St. Sophia, where it had been 
predicted that an armed angel from heaven would 
descend to protect the Christians against the in- 
fidels. Nearly a thousand people were slain or sold 
into slavery; the great city which contained the un- 
counted wealth piled up through the long ages of 
its Imperial history became for three horrible days 
a scene of murder, pillage, riot, and confusion, and 
the Turkish Crescent was hoisted over the walls, 
there to remain until our own time. 

The final assault by the Turks is thus told by 
Gibbon, in his picturesque and sonorous style : 

[204] 



THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 

The preceding night had been strenuously employed; 
the troops, the cannons, and the fascines, were advanced 
to the edge of the ditch, which, in many parts, pre- 
sented a smooth and level passage to the breach, and 
his four-score galleys almost touched with the prows 
and their scaling-ladders, the less defensible walls of the 
harbour. . . . 

The foremost ranks consisted of the refuse of the host, 
a voluntary crowd who fought without order or command ; 
of the feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants and 
vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind 
hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common impulse 
drove them onward to the wall; the most audacious to 
climb were instantly precipitated ; and not a dart, not a bul- 
let, of the Christians, was idly wasted on the accumulated 
throng. But their strength and ammunition were ex- 
hausted in this laborious defence; the ditch was filled with 
the bodies of the slain ; they supported the footsteps of 
their companions ; and of this devoted vanguard the death 
was more serviceable than the life. 

Under their respective bashaws, the troops of Anatolia 
and Romania were successively led to the charge ; their 
progress was various and doubtful; but, after a conflict 
of two hours, the Greeks still maintained and improved 
their advantage; and the voice of the emperor was heard, 
encouraging his soldiers to achieve, by a last effort, the 
deliverance of their country. In that fatal moment the 
Janizaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The 
sultan himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, 
was the spectator and judge of their valour; he was sur- 
rounded by ten thousand of his domestic troops, whom he 

[205] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

reserved for the decisive occasion; and the tide of battle 
was directed and impelled by his voice and eye. 

From the lines, the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman 
artillery thundered on all sides ; and the camp and city, 
the Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a cloud of 
smoke, which could only be dispelled by the final de- 
liverance or destruction of the Roman empire. The single 
combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy 
and engage our affections; the skilful evolutions of war 
may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though 
pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures 
of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and con- 
fusion. 

The immediate loss of Constantinople may be ascribed 
to the bullet or arrow which pierced the gauntlet of John 
Justiniani. The sight of his blood and the exquisite pain 
appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms and counsels 
were the firmest rampart of the city. As he withdrew 
from his station in quest of a surgeon, his flight was per- 
ceived and stopped by the indefatigable emperor. " Your 
wound," exclaimed Palaeologus, " is slight ; the danger 
is pressing; your presence is necessary; and whither will 
you retire ? " " I will retire," said the trembling Genoese, 
" by the same road winch God has opened to the Turks " ; 
and at these words he hastily passed through one of the 
breaches of the inner wall. 

By this pusillanimous act he stained the honours of a 
military life; and the few day which the leader survived 
in Galata, or the Isle of Chios, were imbittered by 
his own and the public reproach. His example was imitated 
by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries, and the de- 

[206] 



THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 

fence began to slacken when the attack was pressed with 
redoubled vigour. The number of the Ottomans was fifty, 
perhaps a hundred, times superior to that of the Chris- 
tians ; the double walls were reduced by the cannon to a 
heap of ruins: in a circuit of several miles, some places 
must be found more easy of access, or more feebly 
guarded; and if the besiegers could penetrate in a single 
point, the whole city was irrecoverably lost. 

The first who deserved the sultan's reward was Hassan 
the Janizary, of gigantic stature and strength. With his 
cimeter in one hand and his buckler in the other, he 
ascended the outward fortification ; of the thirty Jani- 
zaries who were emulous of his valour, eighteen perished in 
the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve companions had 
reached the summit; the giant was precipitated from the 
rampart; he rose on one knee, and was again oppressed 
by a shower of darts and stones. 

But his success had proved that the achievement was 
possible; the walls and towers were instantly covered 
with a swarm of Turks ; and the Greeks, now driven from 
the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing 
multitudes. 

Amidst these multitudes the emperor, who accomplished 
all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen 
and finally lost. The nobles who fought round his person 
sustained, till their last breath, the honourable names of 
Palaeologus and Cantacuzene: his mournful exclamation 
was heard, " Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off 
my head ? " and his last fear was that of falling alive into 
the hands of the infidels. The prudent despair of Con- 
stantine cast away the purple; amidst the tumult he fell 

[207] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a 
mountain of the slain. 

After his death, resistance and order were no more ; the 
Greeks fled toward the city ; and many were pressed and 
stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The 
victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of the inner 
wall; and as they advanced into the streets, they were 
soon joined by their brethren, who had forced the gate 
Phenar on the side of the harbour. In the first heat of the 
pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the 
sword ; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty ; and the 
victors acknowledged that they should immediately have 
given quarter if the valour of the emperor and his chosen 
bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in 
every part of the capital. It was thus, after a siege of 
fifty-three days, that Constantinople was irretrievably 
subdued by the arms of Mohamed II. Her empire only 
had been subverted by the Latins ; her religion was trampled 
in the dust by the Moslem conquerors. 

There is in the next siege, that of the Island of 
Rhodes, an increase in the part played by cannon- 
fire. This had so proved its value that the strong 
walls of Rhodes were unable to resist the shot poured 
upon them. But though the walls were broken 
through again and again, the breaches were so 
bravely defended by the Knights of St. John that 
they won immortal glory in resisting the enormous 
forces of the Turks. 

[208] 




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THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 

Gunpowder appears also in the mines that were 
prepared to blow up the walls when these should be 
attacked by the enemy. The important points in 
the city became the targets for the enemy's guns, 
and, in general, we see in this siege the beginning 
of the days when gunpowder plays the chief part in 
the taking of cities. 



[209] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES, 1522 

JUST to the southward of Asia Minor, in the 
Mediterranean, is a chain of large islands 
extending southwestward into the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. The largest of these is the Island of 
Crete; then come two smaller islands nearer the 
shore, and, finally, the Island of Rhodes, just about 
forty-five miles long and half as broad, lying near- 
est the coast of Asia Minor. 

As it possesses two fine harbours on the eastward 
side and lies at the mouth of the iEgean Sea right 
in the path of ships on voyages from Turkey and 
Greece to the East, and as, in the old days, this 
was one of the greatest trade-routes, constantly full 
of shipping, the Island of Rhodes has always been 
a most important naval-station and trade-mart. The 
climate is fine and sunshiny, the land is fertile, and 
the island has always been populous, and, occasion- 
ally, a bone of contention between rival nations. 

Either across or at the side of one of its harbours 
stood the great " Colossus of Rhodes," one of the 
Seven Wonders of the world. This stood until a 

[210] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

little more than two centuries before Christ, when 
an earthquake caused its fall and destruction, leav- 
ing great brazen fragments lying upon the shore in 
the waters of the harbour until 656 a.d., when the 
Saracens, having taken the city, sold the old metal 
to an Eastern dealer, who loaded a train of nine 
hundred camels in order to convey the broken pieces 
from the desert. 

The city has had many sieges. Demetrius Polior- 
cetes, whose second name means " city-taker," failed 
to keep up his reputation here, for though in 304 
B.C. he succeeded in making breaches in the walls, 
his men were driven away. In 42 B.C. the great 
Roman, Cassius, took the place and plundered it. 
In the Middle Ages, just at the beginning of the 
fourteenth century, the island, which was then in 
the possession of the Greek Emperor Emmanuel, 
ruler of Constantinople, was granted to the Knights 
of St. John, or the Knights-Hospitalers. 

The story of these knights is one of the most 
romantic in history, but would fill many volumes. 
The order began in 1023, when a little hospital was 
established in Jerusalem for the benefit of pilgrims 
to the Holy City. After the Crusaders had taken 
Jerusalem, their wounded were cared for by the 
attendants of this little charity, and this caused the 

[211] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Hospitalers to be renowned and favoured through- 
out Christendom. Large sums were sent for their 
support, and rich men, dying, left money and lands 
for their benefit. The order grew so rich and its 
property was so widespread that officers had to be 
appointed all over Europe to take care of the great 
estates belonging to the society. Their great rivals 
were the Knights-Templars, with whom they at 
times came even to open battle. 

While Rhodes was in their keeping, the city of 
Smyrna, which they had conquered and held as an 
outpost, was taken by the Tartar leader, Timour, 
in 1401. But the knights, when he had withdrawn 
his hordes, still remained in possession of Rhodes. 
There was a great wall about the city, which stood 
at the northeast extremity of the island. Within the 
walls was their Church of St. John, the palace of 
their Grand Master, which was really the citadel of 
the fortress, and also the separate quarters of the 
town set apart to the knights of different nations, 
for each country had its branch of the order. 

In 1480 Mohammed II came with an enormous 
force against the island and besieged it by land and 
sea with heavy artillery, for Mohammed possessed 
enormous cannon and very skilful artillerymen. 

But, although the siege was vigorously pressed, 

[ 212 ] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

the inhabitants had maintained their fame for brav- 
ery and skill in fight, and the Turks were compelled 
to give up the siege and retire — which added greatly 
to the fame of the stronghold and to that of the 
order who held it. 

In the year 1522 there came an election to fill the 
office of Grand Master of the order, and after some 
fierce rivalry a French knight, Villiers de l'lsle 
Adam, was elected, defeating another prominent 
knight named D'Amiral. At this time the Turks 
were still warring against the Christians in the 
East, and, after a long siege, had just succeeded in 
capturing the noted city Belgrade, one of the 
strongest and best fortified of Servia, and the 
knights had every reason to expect that the suc- 
cessful Turkish general would soon bring his forces 
against them. 

It was partly for this reason that they had been 
so deeply interested in the selection of the Grand 
Master, L'lsle Adam, aware that he might have to 
provide for the defence of the island against the 
conqueror of Belgrade, Solyman II, sailed at once 
from France for Rhodes. 

His voyage was most adventurous. At first his 
ship caught fire, and the flames were extinguished 
only after the most desperate efforts of his crew. 

[213] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

A terrible thunderstorm overtook them shortly af- 
terward, and the ship was struck by lightning, kill- 
ing nine of the crew and melting L'Isle's sword as 
it hung at his side, but without injuring the Grand 
Master. It was still the custom to coast along the 
shores, and it was fortunate that the Master of the 
Order did so, for he was told at one of the ports 
that the noted pirate Curtoglu was cruising about 
in the hope of capturing him before he could reach 
the island. By sailing at night instead of by day, 
the pirate was eluded, and L'Isle landed safely 
in the harbour of Rhodes and set himself at once 
to prepare for the coming of the Turks. 

It is said that the father of Solyman II, address- 
ing his son from his death-bed, had declared to him : 
" You will be a great and powerful monarch, pro- 
vided you take Belgrade and drive the knights 
from Rhodes." Probably this was known; for 
though Solyman sent messages to the knights, 
promising them friendship and offering to " cul- 
tivate their favour," L'Isle Adam sent no reply 
except to call the attention of the Turks to the fact 
that they had put in command of the Turkish fleet 
the pirate Curtoglu, who, after the failure of his 
attempt to seize the Grand Master, had been de- 
feated by a ship of the Rhodians and forced to give 

[214] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

up some of his plunder. Still the Sultan, Solyman, 
pretended to be friendly, and humbly desired that 
an ambassador might be sent to him to represent 
the island, but L'Isle Adam refused, knowing too 
well what would be done to the ambassador. His 
good sense was proved shortly afterward when he 
learned that the Turks had captured a Rhodian 
sailor, and by torturing him had extracted all the 
information that he could give about the defences 
of the island. 

In order to strengthen themselves as much as pos- 
sible, the knights despatched swift ships to Europe 
and sent messages begging help from France, Ger- 
many, and other countries. But at this time Euro- 
pean wars kept all the monarchs busy, and the only 
help that came to the knights was the arrival of 
five hundred Cretans — archers with the crossbow 
and most famed for their skill. In addition to these, 
there came in the same vessel a certain Venetian 
engineer, Gabriel Martinigo, known throughout 
Christendom for his skill in fortification and mili- 
tary matters. 

Hardly had he become acquainted with them than 
his admiration for the knights led Martinigo to 
ask to become one of the order. He was eagerly 
welcomed to their number, and at once appointed 

[215] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

to high office and given full charge of the prepara- 
tions to resist the Turks' attack. With the eye of a 
master, he examined the ramparts. He built new 
works at what he considered the weaker points, made 
openings for guns to sweep positions that needed 
defence, and dug great mines under such parts of 
the walls as seemed to invite assault bv the Turks. 
Not only did he strengthen the outer fortifications, 
but caused strong barricades to be built here and 
there in the streets of the town so that even if the 
walls could be taken the defence of the place might 
be kept up as long as possible. 

When this engineer declared all was ready, the 
garrison were ordered to parade in the public square 
and all sworn to defend the city to the last. To make 
sure that their garrison was supplied with arms, 
each soldier also made oath that his equipment was 
his own and would be ready when needed. The next 
question was as to ammunition and supplies. Sev- 
eral of the leaders, one of them being D'Amiral, 
who had been defeated in his attempts to be elected 
Grand Master, were sent to find out exactly how 
much powder and shot and what supplies the 
knights could rely upon, and they assured the 
Grand Master that both food and ammunition were 
ample for their needs. 

[216] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

All was now ready for the Turks' attack. But 
D'Amiral and some of the knights who favoured 
him asked permission to make a brief visit to a 
neighbouring island on some business of their own. 
Naturally, the Grand Master refused; whereupon 
the rebellious knights seized a vessel and set sail 
secretly. In spite of their dangerous position, L'Isle 
Adam showed the true qualities of a leader, for, call- 
ing a meeting of his knights, he at once demanded 
the expulsion and disgrace of these men who had 
deserted their posts at a time when the greatest dan- 
gers threatened. He was loyally supported, and the 
vote was passed. This had the effect of shaming 
D'Amiral and his followers, who returned and 
upon their knees begged the Grand Master's for- 
giveness. There was no further sign of disloyalty. 

The number of knights themselves was about 
six hundred; of soldiers, or men-at-arms, some 
forty-five hundred, with enough volunteers from 
the town, sailors from the vessels, and peasants from 
the country round about, to bring up the total to 
six or seven thousand men. All these soldiers and 
labourers were carefully trained, assigned to the 
different towers and points of danger, while four 
bodies of knights were held in reserve so that they 
might lend aid wherever it was from time to time 

[217] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

needed. L'Isle Adam himself retained a small body- 
guard like a staff of officers, and took direction of 
the entire defence. 

As soon as it was learned from spies and fugitives 
that the Turks were actually arraying their forces, 
a grand service was held in the Church of St. John 
under the direction of two archbishops, and the 
church was filled with knights in their sombre robes 
marked with the white Maltese cross, and with the 
sturdy men-at-arms, while the prelates prayed for 
the success of the Christians against the infidels. 

The force of the Turks is believed to have con- 
sisted of about two hundred thousand men, and 
their naval force included between five and seven 
hundred galleys, according to various accounts. 

On June 26, 1522, just as the knights and in- 
habitants were celebrating the Octave of the Feast 
of St. John by a grand procession, a cry arose from 
one of the outposts on a lofty hill that the Turkish 
fleet was in sight. Despite the approach of the 
dreaded enemy, the Grand Master sternly forbade 
the knights to change the day's proceedings, and 
as the infidels came stealing toward the city the 
knights marched in their procession toward the 
Church of St. John, and there held services as if in 
times of peace. This religious office being per- 

[218] 



THE SIEGE OP RHODES 

formed, the men ran to their stations, the great 
gates of the city were shut and barricaded, the 
bridges across the deep ditches were raised, and 
from all the towers the banners of the Knights of 
St. John were flung out in defiance of the foe. 

Along the lofty walls gathered soldiers and citi- 
zens to look down upon the great galleys of their 
enemies, and it is well said by Porter, the historian 
of the knights, that among that throng there must 
have been many an old man who remembered well 
the great siege of forty-two years before, when the 
Turks had come as eagerly, only to meet with a 
shameful repulse. If they recalled their victory with 
pride, yet they could not help seeing that this at- 
tack was to be in every way more difficult to meet. 
Solyman was a noted general, and up to this time 
had never been defeated. His success in taking the 
city of Belgrade was still fresh in men's minds. 
There was little to give courage to the brave soldiers 
on the walls, as they watched the arrival and dis- 
embarkation of the Turkish forces. 

At night, however, there came a crumb of com- 
fort. A deserter had escaped by swimming from one 
of the Turkish vessels, and on being brought before 
the Grand Master he declared that there was great 
disaffection in the fleet. He said that the Turks, too, 

[219] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

remembered the disastrous siege in the last genera- 
tion, and that they feared to attack a city so strong- 
ly defended by men whose bravery and devotion was 
known throughout the world. But there was no sign 
of slackness in the besiegers' way of going about 
their work. With the Turks were some fifty or sixty 
thousand peasants and labourers who had been 
brought to do the heavy work against the forti- 
fications. These men were set at once to digging 
trenches and erecting ramparts, placing the Turks' 
cannon where they would best command the city 
walls, and putting up shelters for the Turkish sol- 
diers. 

At first the knights now and then sent out strong 
forces to make attacks upon these labourers, but 
they soon saw that the Turks cared little how many 
of these poor peasants were slain. They made no 
attempt to protect them, and simply sent new men 
to take the places of those that had fallen. Mean- 
while, though the forces sent out from the town were 
generally successful, now and then they lost a few 
men ; and this they could not afford, since the Turks 
had twenty men to their one, without counting the 
labourers who were digging the trenches. 

When the Turks had their guns in position, a 
heavy cannonade began and was continued for days 

[220] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

at a time without doing any great damage to the 
strong fortifications. As the knights were still well 
provisioned, and there was no sign that the walls 
would give way, they were content to sit within, 
simply remaining on guard, and to allow the Turks 
to hurl cannon-balls into the town. This went on 
until the Sultan, who had not yet come before 
Rhodes, became impatient and arrived with rein- 
forcements, determined to push the siege vigor- 
ously. 

The only incident of this early part of the siege 
that is interesting is the discovery of a plot to burn 
the city. A certain Turkish woman, a slave, had 
formed a conspiracy with other Turkish slaves to 
set fire to Rhodes in several places at once, hoping 
either to destroy it or to aid her countrymen, by 
the confusion, to make an assault upon the walls. 
Fortunately for the knights, one of the women 
revealed the plot; the poor slaves were subjected to 
tortures and confessed, with the exception of the 
ringleader, who died in silence. She was barbar- 
ously cut to pieces and her body shown upon the 
ramparts, to convince the Turks that the plot had 
failed. Undoubtedly it was necessary to let the 
besiegers know that this plot was discovered, for 
there were plenty of signs that somebody within 

[221] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

the city was giving information to the Turkish 
generals. 

One sign of the accurate information given to 
the Turks was their directing the fire of their guns 
upon the bell-tower which stood on a lofty place in 
the city. This was used as a watch-tower for the 
Knights of St. John, and from it they could ob- 
serve and prepare against the Turkish attacks. But 
hardly had they organised this service, when the 
heavy fire of Turkish guns was turned upon their 
watch-tower. It was battered to pieces and fell. 
Although the Rhodians served their artillery well, 
they could not do much damage to the Turkish 
earthworks, and, as has been said, they could not 
afford to make attacks upon the besiegers, since the 
losses more than offset any success they gained. 

When the tower had fallen and they had ceased 
to take prisoners by sorties, the knights found 
themselves without information as to the Turks' 
proceedings; so certain Rhodian sailors volunteered 
to dress themselves as Turks and to make an expe- 
dition in search of information. There was no great 
danger of detection, since men were chosen who 
could speak the Turkish language. 

Stealing out of the harbour in a light boat, these 
sailors coasted cautiously along until they succeed- 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

ed in capturing and bringing back to the town two 
unfortunate Moslems. These prisoners were taken 
to the top of one of the highest towers and told that 
if they should show any hesitation in telling all they 
knew they would at once be hurled from the battle- 
ments. Under this persuasion the men only too 
eagerly gave an account of all Solyman's forces and 
even a list of his artillery. From their account we 
can see that the Turks were well supplied with can- 
non, ranging from six brass guns of about ten 
inches calibre to a dozen brass mortars meant to dis- 
charge — what was entirely new in those days — hol- 
low brass balls filled with " artificial fire." These 
are said to be the first explosive shells ever fired from 
cannon. But the seventy or eighty cannon had so 
far done but little execution, and the shells had 
failed so entirely that only eight of them were used. 
When the Sultan himself arrived, he saw at once 
that to do any damage to the town his artillery must 
be brought nearer and raised higher. Consequently 
the Turks promptly began the construction of two 
great mounds, or " cavaliers," as they were then 
called, at two different points of attack. These 
mounds were built of bags filled with earth strength- 
ened with timber, and were only completed after 
the knights had slain many of the Turkish forces. 

[223] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

When the guns had thus been raised, they became 
more effective, and one of the projecting bastions 
upon the works, one that covered an older wall, was 
battered to pieces. 

But the triumph of the Turks was short, for the 
old rampart behind the new wall resisted them. 
The Turkish fire, however, had become so destruc- 
tive that after several weeks of bombarding the wall 
had given way in a number of places. But no sooner 
was a breach formed than the Turks would dis- 
cover, behind that they had battered down, a new 
wall guarded by a deep ditch. 

The Turkish Sultan, finding his artillery too weak 
to destroy the walls fast enough, now set his men 
at work to dig below the walls for the purpose of 
undermining them. 

The Venetian engineer, Martinigo, did his best 
to discover the Turkish mines, using for the purpose 
the stretched head of a drum, which he placed upon 
the ground as a sounding-board — just as the old 
copper-worker used the brazen shield. Though some 
of the mines were discovered, one of them was com- 
pleted, and when its supports were burned, a great 
part of the bastion known as " St. Mary's " fell in, 
leaving a wide breach. 

But here came, to repulse the attack that followed 

[224] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

the falling of the wall, the Grand Master and his 
bodies of knights held in reserve. The Turkish 
hordes ran into the opening only to be hewed down 
by the powerful knights in armour; and although 
the Turkish general urged his men to the attack and 
mercilessly cut down those that retreated, and al- 
though the attack was again and again renewed, 
the Turks could not force their way into the city. 

Such assaults were repeated again and again, as 
new breaches were made in the walls. But no sooner 
was a Turkish attack ready than alarm-bells would 
ring out in the city, and the garrison, armed with 
swords, small arms, Greek fire, boiling pitch, and 
even heavy stones, would charge so boldly against 
the Turkish columns that they were always re- 
pulsed. Even at one time when a general assault 
was made by the Turkish forces against every part 
of the wall simultaneously, the small garrison 
fought so bravely as to drive back the Turkish war- 
riors even after they had gained a footing on top 
of the walls. 

This last grand assault was watched by the Sultan 
in person from the top of a lofty scaffolding upon 
which he had established his throne ; and in his anger 
over the defeat of this grand effort, he caused sev- 
eral of his generals to be put to death ; and to pun- 

[225] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

ish the pirate, Curtoglu, for having failed to send 
his forces in a naval attack at the moment of the 
grand assault, the Sultan caused him to be stretched 
out upon the deck of his galley, bastinadoed — that 
is, cruelly whipped on the soles of his feet — and then 
degraded from his command and expelled from the 
navy. 

So much gunpowder had been burned on both 
sides that the supplies began to fail. The Turks 
sent their ships for more, but the knights could not 
renew their supply. They found some saltpetre 
within the town, and manufactured what gunpow- 
der they could. It may be that the shortness of am- 
munition came about because of the mines that had 
used so great a quantity; but it was believed by 
many in the town that D'Amiral and the others who 
had reported before the siege that there was powder 
in plenty had been treacherous. Fear of treachery 
is always common in long sieges, but here it was 
confirmed when a Jewish physician was caught 
shooting a message tied to an arrow into the Turk- 
ish camp. His guilt having been proved, he was put 
to death, and not long afterward D'Amiral's ser- 
vant, caught on the walls at a lonely place with a 
bow in his hand, was accused of the same treachery, 
and, when tortured, claimed that his master had sent 

[226] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

messages to the Turks. On this testimony and that 
of a priest who claimed to have seen a message sent 
(but had certainly never told of it before) , D'Ami- 
ral was executed, though probably innocent. 

Learning of the distress in the town, the Sultan 
pressed the attack most vigorously, and as breaches 
were wider and defenders fewer, the danger of cap- 
ture daily increased. At length the Turks succeeded 
in keeping possession of the top of the wall in two 
places, still without being able to force a way into 
the town. The Sultan had lost ten thousand soldiers 
each month for half a year, and fearing help would 
come from Europe, he now sent letters, by arrow- 
mail, inviting a surrender. 

The Grand Master refused even to treat with the 
Sultan, and threatened to put to death any mes- 
senger who should enter the town. It was the wish 
of the Knights of St. John to perish in the ruins 
rather than surrender. But the townspeople be- 
sought the knights to make terms while it was pos- 
sible to save the women and children. The Venetian 
engineer, Martinigo, was forced when questioned to 
confess that the town could not be held, since they 
had not men enough to repair the walls, nor had 
they enough artillery to defend the breaches that 
had been made. The Grand Master, seeing that he 

[227] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

would no longer be supported by the townspeople, 
then tried to secure from the Sultan the right to 
march out carrying their property, five years' ex- 
emption from payment of taxes, and an agreement 
that the churches should not be profaned nor the 
town pillaged. 

The Turks agreed, but before the matter was 
finally settled a fight broke out between the Rho- 
dians and the Turks that caused a renewal of hos- 
tilities. There was one more grand assault at a place 
where the walls had been broken and a new wall 
built within. The first day of fighting at this point 
resulted in the defeat of the besiegers, but next 
day the breach was taken and held by the Turkish 
troops. 

Once more the townspeople insisted that peace 
should be made before it was too late to save their 
lives, and the Sultan generously offered the same 
terms as before, which this time were accepted. All 
those who chose to leave the Island of Rhodes were 
allowed twelve days to do so. As for the knights, 
they set sail for the Island of Malta, where they 
were received rather as conquerors than as a de- 
feated garrison, for, as was said by Charles V when 
he heard the news of the capitulation, " Nothing in 
the world has been so honourably lost as Rhodes.' ' 

[228] 



THE SIEGE OF RHODES 

In taking the island the Turks had lost a hun- 
dred and three thousand men in twenty-two battles ; 
the knights seven hundred and three of their num- 
ber. But the chief lesson to be learned from this 
siege is the fact that artillery had not yet become 
strong enough to destroy well-built fortifications, 
and thus the story of the Siege of Rhodes forms 
a good introduction to sieges of modern times 
where the whole nature of defences has been 
changed to meet the heavy fire of the great cannon. 



[229] 



THE FIFTH PERIOD 

Siege of Gibraltar, 1783 
Siege of Antwerp, 1832 
Siege of Vicksburg, 1863 
Siege of Paris, 1870 
Siege of Port Arthur, 1904 



[230] 
[231 ] 

[232] 



THE FIFTH PERIOD 

THIS last period extends from the early days 
of gunpowder to the present time, and owes 
its changed methods of attack and defence 
simply to the increased power and range of fire- 
arms. The general principles are not entirely differ- 
ent, but the application of them has given rise to 
some remarkable changes. When siege-guns were 
gradually so improved as to throw their heavy pro- 
jectiles from one, two, three, and up to twenty 
miles, and when these projectiles came to carry ex- 
plosive charges powerful enough to blow masonry 
to atoms, it became necessary at first to make walls 
as strong as possible, and finally even to keep them 
out of sight. Nothing except the solid earth itself, 
or the thickest toughened steel plates, can for an 
instant resist fire so effective. 

Until recently it was believed also that the use 
of magazine rifles would make it impossible for an 
army to charge across an open ground against a 
line of defence held even by a very small body of 
men. But such charges, in spite of fearful losses, 

[233] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

have, as we shall see, been made, and made success- 
fully. Fortified places, strengthened by every mod- 
ern device and well defended, have been taken, and 
it seems that we have not yet reached the point 
where either attack or defence can be said to be too 
strong for the science and courage of an enemy. 

In order to choose a siege that shall, while show- 
ing the effect of gun-fire, yet be new in its incidents, 
we shall next tell of the defence of the great fort- 
ress of Gibraltar in the year 1783. This is an inter- 
esting siege, and yet is little else than a grand fight 
of cannon afloat against cannon ashore. Full prep- 
aration was made on both sides, and it is purely a 
question of holding or losing a fortress. There are 
in these years so many great sieges from which to 
choose that it is necessary to select those that are 
unlike others in order that we may not repeat ac- 
counts of assaults, mines, sallies, and so on — which 
differ only in place and in date. The siege of Gib- 
raltar had many peculiar features. 



[234] 



THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR, 1783 

THE great Rock of Gibraltar, one of the 
ancient " Pillars of Hercules " that were for 
ages looked upon as barriers beyond which 
sailors could not venture save at deadly peril, is 
connected to Spain by a sandy isthmus which makes 
the great rock a peninsula, guarding the entrance 
into the Mediterranean Sea. The rock itself has 
its highest point at the northern end, where it ends 
in a precipice toward the sandy isthmus. Toward 
the Mediterranean, too, it presents a cliff -like face. 
From the northern point the rock gradually lessens 
in height toward the south and west. The northern 
portion is about twelve hundred feet high, and the 
length of the ridge is a mile and a half. 

Though the westward slope is gradual, there are 
deep ravines and high cliffs, making it difficult to 
ascend, and at the base a level plain is occupied by 
the town of Gibraltar. Being of limestone, the rock 
is honeycombed with caverns and passages, now 
and then opening into great rocky halls, but for the 
most part narrow and winding. These caves are 

[235 ] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

made beautiful by groups of stalagmites and stalac- 
tites. Though from a distance the rock seems bar- 
ren, the country round about the rock itself sup- 
ports much vegetation. The climate is tropical, with 
a dry summer and a rainy season in winter. Until 
very recently the water supply was not good, and 
as a military station the place had a bad reputa- 
tion, so many of the garrison suffered from disease. 

In history the rock appears as a fortress first 
when it fell into the hands of the Moors. It was the 
Moors who called it from the name of their leader, 
Tarik, " Geb-el Tarik "— Tarik's Hill. This name 
became Gebeltar, and then Gibraltar. 

The fortress has withstood many sieges. In 1309 
the Spanish took it; and, after an unsuccessful at- 
tack in 1315, it was taken again by the Moors 
eighteen years later. Two unsuccessful attempts to 
retake it followed in 1344 and 1349. The sixth 
siege was between two rival Moors ; the seventh was 
another unsuccessful attack by the Spanish. In 1462 
the Christians took it through a Moor's treachery, 
and then it was taken by a Spanish grandee, whose 
descendants lost it and then retook it. This makes 
ten sieges, and an eleventh followed when the Al- 
gerian pirates tried but failed to bring the rock 
once more under Mohammedan rule. 

[236] 



THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR 

The Spanish now greatly strengthened the forti- 
fications, and throughout Europe this stronghold 
was regarded as impregnable. But in 1704 it sur- 
rendered to an attack by an English and Dutch 
fleet and a body of German soldiers. Sir George 
Rooke, although the attack had been made in the 
interest of the Austrians, hoisted the English flag 
over Gibraltar and took possession. The Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica declares it was unprincipled in 
England to take advantage of this unscrupulous 
act, and ungrateful to leave the English com- 
mander unrewarded! In the autumn of the same 
year an attempt was made by the Spaniards to re- 
gain the fortress, but they were defeated. Twenty- 
one years afterward another Spanish failure was 
recorded. 

These failures, the last but one of the various 
attacks and defences of the great rock, help us to 
understand both the strength of the fortress and 
also the intense desire of the Spaniards to gain pos- 
session of it. Consequently when France and Spain 
found themselves, in 1779, in alliance against Eng- 
land, one of their main objects was to succeed in 
driving the British from this gateway to the Medi- 
terranean. They spared no labour, no expense, no 
thought, in preparing the grand expedition that 

[237] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

would, they believed, make the taking of the for- 
tress a certainty. 

At that time the English commander, General 
George Augustus Elliot, was sixty-two years of 
age, a skilful and energetic leader and tactician. 
The garrison consisted of about five thousand men, 
five hundred of them belonging to the artillery and 
engineer corps. There were four English and five 
Hanoverian regiments. Within five days after the 
declaration of war, the Spanish force took posses- 
sion of the neck of land, cutting off the fortress from 
communication with the mainland; and their fleet, 
far stronger than the few British vessels in the har- 
bour, prevented any communication by sea. While 
the Spaniards and French were preparing their 
serious attack, the garrison worked hard to make 
all ready, though it seemed that they might have to 
surrender before long through lack of food. 

Gradually the townspeople escaped, one way or 
another, until only the British garrison and their 
families remained. By the beginning of the year 
1780, having been cut off from the world for six 
months, the garrison were compelled by famine to 
subsist largely upon dandelion greens, leeks, this- 
tles, and such roots and herbs as they could gather. 
The Hanoverian soldiers rigged up incubators to 

[238] 



THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR 

hatch eggs, and everything was done to increase 
and to eke out the food supply. 

But just as they were reduced to the last extrem- 
ity, an English fleet, under the great Admiral Rod- 
ney, won a decisive victory over the Spaniards at 
Cape St. Vincent, capturing the Spanish com- 
mander. It is said that this Spanish grandee on 
being told that the small boy who stood at atten- 
tion near the gangway was the Royal Prince, who 
afterward became William IV, exclaimed: "Well 
does Great Britain merit the empire of the sea!" 
He was greatly amazed that one of the blood royal 
should be found serving as a petty officer in the 
English fleet. 

When Rodney arrived in the harbour of Gibraltar 
he was able to land plenty of supplies and also 
strongly to reinforce the garrison. He took away 
from Gibraltar also the " useless mouths " ; that is, 
all those not capable of fighting. 

While the British fleet was lying at anchor, the 
Spanish endeavoured to burn it by means of fire- 
ships; but the attack was a failure, greatly to the 
joy of the lookers-on from the garrison above. Soon 
afterward the British fleet sailed away to the West 
Indies. 

By autumn not only had the supplies once more 

[239] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

run short, but owing to the garrison having been 
forced to live mainly upon salt provisions, they were 
reduced to a pitiful state by ravages of the scurvy, 
that frightful disease which in modern times science 
has made almost unknown except where shipwreck 
or some similar disaster cuts men off from civilisa- 
tion for long periods. Fortunately, the ravages of 
the scurvy were stayed by the timely capture 
of a Dutch vessel laden with lemons and oranges; 
for the juice of these fruits is a specific for the 
disease. 

Another supply of provisions came to the rock 
in 1781, and this was just in time to prepare the 
garrison against the last great siege, which began 
in May of that year. Batteries having been placed, 
the enemy bombarded the town and the rock for 
two months, succeeding in destroying the town, but 
doing little other damage. Against these batteries 
the English could do little; but in November of 
1781 they sent out two thousand men, Elliot him- 
self going with them, and captured the batteries, 
nearly a mile away, destroying them entirely and 
blowing up their magazines. This, however, had 
little effect in checking the bombardment, which 
was kept up so steadily that in an account of the 
siege it is noted by one of the garrison that from 

[240] 



THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR 

seven o'clock in the evening of May 4th to the 
same hour the next day no gun was fired — it 
being the first twenty-four hours that had passed 
for thirteen months without the discharge of can- 
non continuously. 

Meanwhile the island of Minorca had been 
taken by the Spanish, and, emboldened by this 
victory, they brought before Gibraltar a force of 
thirty-three thousand troops, with a hundred and 
seventy cannon, hoping to repeat their success with 
the greater stronghold. The commander of these 
troops, De Crillon, prepared for the attack upon 
Gibraltar great floating batteries, devised by 
D'Arcon, a French engineer, which he did his best 
to make irresistible and indestructible. Taking ten 
ships, he cut them down to mere hulks, timbered 
them heavily all over to a thickness of seven feet, 
packed the hulls here and there full of wet sand, 
and ran water pipes through their walls. He also 
roofed them with hides upon a heavy framework 
so steeply pitched that it was believed all shot and 
shell would glance from them. They will remind 
American readers of the Confederate Merrimac. 

These vessels were prepared in the harbour of 
Algeciras, and against them the English, who 
probably had learned from spies what was going 

[241] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

on, resolved to employ red-hot shot in greater num- 
bers than had ever before been used. For heating 
these, furnaces were built in the fortress near all 
the heavy guns. De Crillon relied upon the fact 
that his big vessels were made of green timber, 
packed with wet sand, and full of water pipes, and 
did not believe they could be set on fire. 

Meantime, at home, in England, a fleet was pre- 
paring for the relief of Gibraltar, and it was dur- 
ing the preparation of this force that the celebrated 
catastrophe happened to the Royal George, which 
toppled over in dock, drowning nearly all of the 
ship's company. Cowper's poem on the subject is 
well known. 

On September 12th the French and Spaniards 
advanced to the attack with forty-seven ships of 
the line, which carried each three tiers of guns, 
with the ten floating batteries, and many small 
craft beside. At the same time there were in their 
army forty thousand men waiting near a flotilla 
of covered boats ready to attack when the fort 
should be silenced. 

The next day the floating batteries were towed 
to within twelve hundred yards, and by ten o'clock 
one of the greatest artillery battles in history be- 
gan, some four hundred pieces of cannon being 

[242] 



THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR 

actively engaged. A perfect shower of red-hot 
cannon balls descended upon the Spanish forces; 
but apparently everything rebounded from the 
floating batteries without effect. All day, and un- 
til afternoon, both sides showered their shot upon 
the enemy, but at two o'clock suddenly one of the 
floating batteries was seen to give off great masses 
of smoke. At the same time its fire almost ceased, 
and the British began to hope that at least one of 
the monsters had been disabled. 

What had happened was this: The British red- 
hot shot had sunk into the green timbers, penetrat- 
ing several feet. Here they had retained the heat 
long enough gradually to fire the timbers. In vain 
did the Spanish attempt to reach and extinguish 
the many fires that had been thus started. Their 
fire slackened, for even the artillerymen were busied 
in finding and extinguishing the many flames that 
had sprung up. 

Meanwhile night had come on, and the British 
did not know how destructive their fire had been 
until a little after midnight, when the admiral's 
floating battery — that from which smoke had come 
— suddenly burst into a mass of flames. This was 
the beginning of the fires that caused the destruc- 
tion of the fleet. 

[243] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

These battery vessels had been so heavily sup- 
plied with ammunition that as they took fire their 
crews were afraid to remain in them; and when, 
at five o'clock in the morning, one of them blew 
up with a tremendous explosion, it was decided to 
abandon them all. As soon as, by the light of 
these flaming vessels, it was seen that their fire 
had ceased, the British sent their own vessels to 
rescue the Spanish and French crews, and the fight- 
ing ceased while both forces despatched boats to 
take up the survivors. The British bravely tried 
to tow one of the floating batteries to Gibraltar, 
but hardly had they attached themselves to it when 
the fire reached the magazine and it was blown to 
atoms — a proof that the Spaniards were justified 
in escaping from it. By the next day all had 
burned. 

It was not alone the enemy's fleet that suffered, 
for the British had destroyed also two of the land 
batteries and had succeeded in repulsing several 
desperate attacks at the southern end of Gibraltar, 
where, under cover of the terrific fire, the Spaniards 
had tried again and again to land troops. It was 
estimated that during the engagement four thou- 
sand red-hot balls had been shot into the battery- 
ships alone, while the Spanish and French had fired 

[244] 




CO 
00 



o 



o 

m 

w 



2 



THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR 

against the fortress in twenty-four hours over seven 
thousand shot and shell. 

This was the grand effort of the besiegers, and 
it had completely failed. During nine weeks of 
active siege the British lost only sixty-five killed 
and less than four hundred wounded, while the for- 
tifications were hardly injured by the rain of shot 
and shell upon them. 

Though the siege continued for several weeks 
longer, on October 11th, Lord Howe (the same 
Howe who had commanded in America) arrived 
from England with supplies and reinforcements 
for the garrison, and all hope of taking the place 
was abandoned. Peace was not made, however, 
until February of the following year, at which 
time it was formally agreed that Gibraltar should 
remain in the hands of the British. 

From the first blockade to the end of the siege 
covered a period of three years, seven months, and 
twelve days, and in all this time the loss of the 
garrison was only four hundred and seventy men 
by warfare and about twelve hundred from illness 
and privation. 

To contrast with this attack on a seaport, we 
shall tell briefly the stoiy of the taking of a great 

[245] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

land stronghold. This will show how the besiegers, 
by means of a regular digging of trenches, and the 
regular advance of batteries, gradually got near 
enough to blow up the fortifications, and thus gain 
an entry for their soldiers. 



[246] 



THE SIEGE OF ANTWERP, 1832 

A LTHOUGH cannon had been used as far 
/-\ back as the siege of Orleans, and earlier, 
-*- -^ gunpowder had not played an important 
part in the taking of cities until the guns had been 
made light, so as to be readily moved about and to 
shoot straight enough to destroy the old-fashioned 
engines of war from a distance so great that these 
could not reply to the cannon. In the siege of 
Rhodes, cannon played a somewhat important part 
by making breaches in the walls. Gibraltar, one 
might say, was rather a high cliff than a fortress, 
and the work of the cannon in that siege was shown 
in the destruction of the besiegers' vessels rather 
than in any great damage to the English fort. 

Still, as artillery improved and gunners became 
skilful, it was found that the old-fashioned sort of 
fortifications had to be completely changed. No 
longer was it enough to build up strong, straight 
walls, for these could be easily battered down by 
pointing a number of heavy guns at one place. In 
order to meet this defect in strongholds, there arose 

[247] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

a number of clever engineers, who invented ways 
of building fortifications meant to secure two re- 
sults. The first of these was to keep the besiegers 
as far as possible from the main walls and to ar- 
range their own guns so that the besiegers could not 
advance nearer. The second was to arrange the lines 
of their own forts so that as fast as any of these 
were taken by the enemy and the besieger tried to 
turn them to his own use, the captured lines would 
be brought under the fire of the other guns of the 
fort. 

In short, there began to be a regular science of fort 
building, which was worked out down to the finest 
nicety. Every line and angle was calculated so that 
the fire might be as strong as possible in protecting 
each point. The science is one that would require 
several volumes for its complete explanation, but 
in the form that it took in the early days it has 
ceased to be very important, because improvement 
in cannon has been so great that the old rules 
meant to meet the old-fashioned style of attack no 
longer apply. Forts are now attacked from a 
greater distance. 

To give the young reader some idea of the 
building of a fort around an important place, it 
will be enough to give a brief account of the dif- 

[248] 



THE SIEGE OF ANTWERP 

ferent lines that made up a complete system of 
defence. 

Commencing at the inside, a slightly elevated 
platform of earth was known as the " terreplain." 
Rising from this, a slightly higher platform was 
known as a " banquette." This was high enough 
to permit the soldier to fire over the " parapet," 
which was the real breastwork. The front of the 
parapet was strengthened with masonry, and this 
front was called the " revetment." It faced upon a 
narrow " ditch," the two sides of which were the 
" escarpment," and on the side away from the ram- 
part, the " counterscarp." All this first inner wall, 
taken together, was called the rampart. In front of 
this came another slightly lower embankment of 
somewhat the same shape as the rampart, called the 
" tenaille." Beyond the tenaille was the main wide 
" ditch." Next, outside the wide ditch, came a third 
embankment, called the " ravelin." This also had 
its ditch and outside of that ditch its protected em- 
bankment, which last sloped off gradually until it 
was lost in the flat ground. 

Thus it will be seen that there were really four 
lines of defence, each one of which is separated from 
the other by a ditch, and each one is so arranged as 
to look down on and to command the next outer 

[ 9A9 ] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

one by its fire. Each served as a breastwork for the 
garrison, and yet when taken gave little advantage 
to the besieger. 

A complete account of this system of fortifica- 
tion, which was varied in many, many ways, will be 
found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica under the 
word " Fortification." So skilfully were these ram- 
parts arranged that until artillery was greatly 
improved the art of defending cities was easier 
than the art of taking them, and to this is due 
the fact that during the sixteenth century many 
cities and towns were able to defend themselves suc- 
cessfully when they became rebellious and defied 
their feudal lords. Behind their walls their citizens 
feared no attack. 

But, gradually, ways were found to overcome 
this advantage. A great French engineer and com- 
mander, named Vauban, learned both sides of the 
art so thoroughly that he was able not only to build 
magnificent fortresses, but also to teach King Louis 
XIV and his generals how to take them. Vauban 
invented the system known as " ricochet fire." This 
consisted in so directing the fire of the besieging 
guns that the cannon balls, instead of being aimed 
directly at the face of the forts, were fired so as to 
glance from their top and in bounding to drop 

[250] 



THE SIEGE OF ANTWERP 

just over the edge of the embankment. The result 
of this sort of firing, when accurate enough, was 
to dismount the guns of the defenders, thus making 
some parts of the wall defenceless, after which they 
could be taken by the usual assaults. The besiegers 
also made guns, or mortars, meant to fire shells 
upward so that they would fall over and inside the 
ramparts, destroying guns and men. 

Besides this system of direct attack, the engi- 
neers of besiegers worked out a complete system of 
approaching a fortress by trenches. They would 
begin just out of range and dig a long trench, 
parallel to the walls of the fortress. This protected 
their soldiers and engineers, their sappers, pioneers, 
and miners, these latter being the men provided 
with picks and shovels and explosives for the pur- 
pose of digging their way by open trenches or 
underground mines toward the fort. 

A good illustration of this method of taking a 
strong fortress is given by the siege of Antwerp, 
in 1832. The fortress at this time was held by the 
forces of the King of Holland against the will of 
the Belgian people. France and England, having 
agreed to protect the liberties of Belgium, called 
upon the Dutch garrison to withdraw, and upon 
their refusal, sent a very strong army, well provided 

[251] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

with all necessary siege-apparatus, for the purpose 
of taking the fortress. The besieging army con- 
sisted of about sixty-seven thousand men, thousands 
of engineers, and had plenty of artillery. The Ant- 
werp garrison altogether included some five thou- 
sand men. 

On November 24th, at dark, the French engi- 
neers began their first digging or ditch, at a little 
less than half a mile from the citadel. Five days 
later they had completed their first parallel, which 
slanted so that its nearest point was within about 
a thousand feet of the citadel and its farthest point 
w r ithin about twelve hundred feet. This trench was 
connected with their camps by " approaches," roads 
dug in the ground and covered with logs and 
earth, so that men could enter it without being ex- 
posed to the fire of the fortress. 

On November 20th they began two " zigzags." 
These were trenches that approached the fort at 
a slant, first one way and then the other, the 
object being to protect the men from fire at the 
same time that they were digging nearer and 
nearer. In the next few days they were able to carry 
the zigzags within about four hundred feet of the 
' glacis," or first upward slope of the fort, and 
meanwhile by night they had built nine strong 

[252] 



THE SIEGE OF ANTWERP 

earthwork batteries upon the surface of the ground 
and in front of their first parallel trench, and these 
batteries were connected by trenches with the par- 
allels. If the garrison should charge these batteries, 
the soldiers in the trenches could hurry to defend 
the artillerymen. 

Two mortar batteries were also set up, farther 
back. By December 4th the besiegers had com- 
pleted a second parallel that was much nearer to 
the city. The same method of approach by digging 
trenches and zigzags and then establishing batteries 
was continued until December 9th, when they had 
dug their trench close up to the ditch of the fort 
and broken their way into the ditch itself. To this 
a covered way gave the besiegers entry. 

On the night of the 10th the garrison of the fort 
dashed out and tried their best to destroy these 
nearest works, but the besiegers were on their 
guard, drove back the garrison, and soon repaired 
the damage that had been done. The following 
night the besiegers prepared three great rafts of 
logs with which they meant to cross the ditch. 
They had exploded a great bomb known as a " pe- 
tard " against the wall of the fort, making a breach. 
Into the hole thus made a brave sergeant had ven- 
tured, so as to begin digging out a gallery under 

[253] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

the masonry. During the next two or three nights 
this gallery was enlarged and three subterranean 
mines dug out beneath the projecting part of the 
wall. This part of the fortress was known as the 
" Bastion of St. Laurent." It was an outer defence. 

At five o'clock in the morning the fuses were 
lighted, and by the explosion a great part of the 
wall was thrown into the air, leaving a wide gap. 
Into this, with fixed bayonets, rushed a strong 
storming party, capturing one lieutenant and forty- 
eight men who had not been able to withdraw. 

The besiegers were now in possession of part of 
the fortress itself, and made it the means of enter- 
ing into the main defences. From this point the sap- 
ping and mining continued, with the advantage 
that, being within the very fortress itself, the be- 
siegers were not exposed to their enemy's fire. 

During all this time it must be remembered that 
the batteries outside were pouring shot and shell 
constantly upon the walls of the fortress, and thus 
keeping the garrison from bringing a strong force 
to the point which the besiegers were attacking. 
On December 21st began a grand bombardment, 
which lasted until the 23d. By this time the be- 
sieged garrison had lost so many men, and the 
walls had been weakened in so many places, that 

[254] 



THE SIEGE OF ANTWERP 

the commander had decided defence to be hopeless, 
and surrendered. 

The fall of Antwerp was due to the enormous 
advantages on the side of the besieging army. They 
had a force ten times as great as that of the gar- 
rison; they were able to surround the besieged 
places on all sides so as to prevent its being rein- 
forced or supplied with provisions ; they had plenty 
of artillery, so as to keep up a steady rain of mis- 
siles upon the fort ; and thus the fall of the fortress 
was sure, either by being breached, by the loss of 
men inside, or by the failure of provisions. 

It had come at this time to be regarded as cer- 
tain that, given plenty of time and men, no gar- 
rison could maintain itself against a besieging 
force. Sooner or later, the parallels and zigzags 
would bring the besiegers close enough to blow up 
the walls in one or more places, and thus to take 
the various defences one by one until the citadel 
had fallen. It followed from this that the fortifying 
of a town came to mean little more than delaying 
the forces of the besieger in the hope that help 
would come. As the fire of artillery improved and 
became heavier, it also was proved that there was 
little to be gained by building elaborate forts of 

[255] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

stone, since earth walls were better defences and 
were less injured by shot and shell. In fact, a battery 
on a big hill of earth was the best fortress. 

The next step, as length of range increased, was 
to fortify high points of ground at a distance 
around the city to be defended, since these, when 
well provided with guns behind thick earthworks, 
were the best possible way of keeping the besiegers 
at a distance ; and they had to be taken by regular 
approach in trenches precisely as if they were built 
of stone walls. 

Thus in modern times we see a system of attack 
and defence where earthworks on one side are at- 
tacked by earthworks upon the other, the first being 
fixed and the second being built more and more 
near as the besiegers force their way forward. 

In the siege of Vicksburg there is an illustration 
of a great city defended by one strong army and 
taken by another after a most heroic defence, in 
which the line of fortifications was made up of such 
earth forts on high points connected with one an- 
other by means of long trenches, or rifle pits. The 
attack was first by charges, and then by regular 
approaches, with mines, as we shall see. 



[256] 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG, 1863 

A T the beginning of the war between the 
L\ Northern and the Southern States the 
JL JL. situation was not exactly understood on 
either side. Even the wisest leaders and statesmen 
had no idea of the greatness of the struggle, or of 
what points would become most important. It was 
not until both sections awoke to the knowledge that 
neither side was to have an easy victory, but that a 
long and closely contested war was certain, that 
there was deep thought of wherein the strength of 
the two sides lay. At this time a few far-seeing men, 
and at least one woman, Miss Anna Ella Carroll, 
saw that the strength of the Confederacy lay in the 
possession of the Mississippi River. 

One of the first to see this was Admiral Porter, 
of the Union navy. He went to Washington and 
laid before Lincoln and McClellan a plan for tak- 
ing the city of New Orleans, thus securing the 
mouth of the Mississippi, and then by means of 
expeditions up the river and down the river, unit- 
ing at Vicksburg, to capture the great fortified 

[257] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

bluffs that prevented Union vessels from going up 
or down, and thus kept all the lower Mississippi 
open to the Confederates. 

Lincoln saw the importance of this suggestion at 
once, saying: " The Mississippi is the backbone of 
the Confederacy. It is the key to the whole situa- 
tion. While the Confederates hold it, they can ob- 
tain supplies of all kinds, and it is a barrier against 
our forces." This was because the rivers that flow 
into the Mississippi communicated with States on 
each side that afforded food and materials which, at 
New Orleans, where there were skilled mechanics 
and many manufacturing establishments, could be 
turned into whatever was needed by the Southern 
armies, and then sent to them by land wherever they 
were fighting. 

With the capture of New Orleans we have noth- 
ing to do. It is enough to say that Farragut's fleet 
ran by the forts and compelled it to surrender. 
After the taking of that city, the only great strong- 
holds left on the river were Port Hudson and Vicks- 
burg. Great expeditions, both by land and water, 
were prepared to take these cities, and since what- 
ever was done on either side soon came to the knowl- 
edge of the other, the Confederates worked vigor- 
ously to strengthen the defences of both places and 

[258] 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

to garrison them as strongly as possible. Many of 
the troops that had been driven from New Orleans 
marched northward to aid in the defence of Vicks- 
burg. 

We shall not tell of the long siege of Port Hud- 
son, though the story is a most interesting one, 
but shall confine our attention to the even more 
striking attack and defence of the city of Vicks- 
burg; for the fall of Vicksburg was followed soon 
after by the surrender of Port Hudson, partly 
through lack of provisions, and partly because the 
Confederates recognised that it could not be long 
held after the forces that had taken Vicksburg 
were set free to aid in the already strong attack on 
Port Hudson. 

The city of Vicksburg lies right upon the river 
bank, on precipitous bluffs, against the foot of 
which the river flows, except at the southern part, 
where there is a wide, sandy strip ordinarily left 
bare. These bluffs, rising two hundred feet above 
the water, formed not only magnificent sites for 
batteries, but were almost out of reach of shot and 
shell from any cannon carried by the ships of war. 
The only fire effective against them was that of 
mortars — short, thick cannon, pointed upward — 
which sent shells high into the air to fall with a 

[259] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

plunging fire inside the fortification and upon the 
city. 

The first efforts of the Confederates were de- 
voted to increasing the number of guns along the 
bluffs and in manning them from the many skilled 
gunners who had been driven out of Forts Jackson 
and St. Philip, near New Orleans. 

On June 20th, 1862, a young Confederate en- 
gineer, S. H. Lockett, arrived, and was put in 
charge of the defences. He had been working for 
about a week in placing batteries along the bluffs 
above the city, and in preparing a complete map 
of the country round about, when Farragut's fleet 
was sighted coming up the river. On June 27th 
the fleet placed on the opposite side of the river 
a great flotilla of mortar-boats, out of range of 
the Confederate forts, but near enough to throw 
shells into the city. 

Hardly had these vessels taken their positions 
when, suddenly, a second flotilla was discovered on 
the near side of the river, too close to the bluffs to 
be fired upon, since the great guns could not be 
bent far enough downward to reach them. This 
second flotilla had been fitted up with a mask of 
trees and, hidden by these, had stolen up the river 
without being seen. 

[260] 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

At once the bombardment began and was vigor- 
ously replied to, but little harm was done on either 
side. On the next day, at dawn, firing began again, 
and several of the Union vessels succeeded in run- 
ning up the river past the batteries, losing a few 
sailors and killing by their firing a few of the Con- 
federate artillerymen. It was believed in the city 
that a land attack would follow, and ten thousand 
men were made ready to meet it. But it proved a 
false alarm. The Union fleet that lay above the city 
now came down, and joined in the attack, bringing 
another flotilla of mortar boats; and then a bom- 
bardment of two weeks followed that did little 
except make the inhabitants of Vicksburg uncom- 
fortable. As there are great banks of clay in the 
vicinity of the city, many of the people dug into 
them and excavated rooms, which they furnished 
comfortably for refuge during the firing from the 
Union fleet. Cave-building became a regular busi- 
ness in the city. 

The river opposite Vicksburg makes a sharp 
bend, leaving a long tongue of land surrounded by 
the bend, on the point of which was a little town 
named De Soto. The Union engineers thought 
that by cutting through the neck of this tongue of 
land they could get from the river above Vicks- 

[261] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

burg into the river below. A canal was dug, but 
the water of the river fell faster than the canal 
could be deepened, and the attempt to make a new 
channel, leaving Vicksburg harmlessly aside, had 
to be abandoned. 

From July 15th to 28th Vicksburg was ex- 
posed to the fire of the mortar boats, and wit- 
nessed during that time a most exciting naval 
engagement, when the Confederate ram Arkansas 
came down from the Yazoo River and made a most 
gallant fight against the Union fleet. But by the 
end of the month it had evidently been decided that 
an unsupported naval attack was useless, for, with- 
out warning, suddenly the whole fleet set sail, leav- 
ing the Vicksburg people free to come out of their 
caves. 

It was evident to the Confederate engineers that 
Vicksburg was too important to be left alone, and 
since the unsupported naval attack had failed, they 
foresaw that a land and naval attack was sure to 
follow. Consequently, during the interval, they re- 
paired the river batteries so as to make them 
stronger than ever, and thoroughly studied the 
land side of Vicksburg in order to pick out the 
strongest lines of defence for the building of for- 
tifications. 

[262] 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

Back of the city the land consisted of a long suc- 
cession of hills, separated from one another by 
deep ravines. It would have been most laborious to 
make a connected line of ramparts over this uneven 
ground, and so the engineers wisely decided to place 
at the head of each ravine a strong projecting for- 
tification, somewhat triangular in shape, and then 
to connect these with one another by long lines of 
rifle pits — that is, trenches to which the earth dug 
out formed an embankment. These fortifications 
were built largely by slaves, who were brought in 
from all the surrounding country. When finished, 
the line of defence extended seven or eight miles, 
from Haynes's Bluff, on the north, around Vicks- 
burg to Warrenton, on the south. 

About the middle of October, 1862, General 
Pemberton was in command of the Confederate 
forces, General Grant of the Union troops. It had 
long been an accepted truth among military men 
that a general advancing into a hostile country 
must, above all things, have a strong " base of sup- 
plies " ; that is, some fort or town strongly held, 
from which the army could be supplied with food 
and ammunition. General Grant had such a posi- 
tion at Grand Gulf, some miles down the river, 
and his first advance against Vicksburg was de- 

[263] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

feated by a bold and successful raid of the Con- 
federate cavalry, which threatened to cut off his 
line of supply, and Grant had to return toward 
this base. 

Then General Sherman tried from the north- 
ward to get in the rear of Vicksburg to cut off 
the Confederate troops which lay eastward of the 
city; but this attempt was defeated in a fierce bat- 
tle at Chickasaw Bluffs. Next followed another 
attempt by Grant to approach from the Louisiana 
side and to try the canal scheme again, but he was 
forced to retire. Other advances also were made by 
different bodies of Union troops, but none were 
successful. 

Although the story of these various expeditions 
is most interesting, we are concerned at present 
with the final, successful movement made by Gen- 
eral Grant, when, learning that he could not expect 
strong reinforcements for some time, and so would 
be tied to his base of supplies while the Confederates 
were constantly strengthening the city and reinfor- 
cing its garrison, he suddenly decided, against the 
judgment of his advisers and superiors, to abandon 
the line of supplies, to march northward into Missis- 
sippi, so as to meet and, if possible, defeat the 
Confederate forces that lay eastward of the city. 

[264] 




General Grant, the Commander before Vicksburg 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

In May of 1863 he fought and defeated three 
Southern generals, one by one, captured the city 
of Jackson, the capital of the State, destroyed 
there great stores and useful manufactories, and 
gained possession of this great railroad centre 
through which most of the supplies for Vicksburg 
came. 

Meanwhile General Pemberton was at a great 
disadvantage because he had not enough cavalry 
to keep him informed, by scouting, of the move- 
ment of the Union troops; besides, he was under 
conflicting orders, President Jefferson Davis tell- 
ing him to " hold Vicksburg at all costs," while 
the Confederate General Johnston was insisting 
that Vicksburg be abandoned and that the forces 
of Pemberton should unite with his own to defeat 
Grant's army. 

Pemberton's army, mistakenly thinking that 
they were attacking the rear, or a small part of 
the Union troops, made a vigorous attack upon the 
entire body of victorious Federals as they came 
from the capture of Jackson. The Confederates 
were outnumbered, defeated, and so forced to re- 
tire toward Vicksburg, vigorously pursued. Pem- 
berton made a brave effort to hold his ground at a 
bridge where the Jackson road of Vicksburg crosses 

[265] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

the Big Black River; but his men had been shaken 
by their defeat of the day before, and after a short 
attempt to hold their intrenchments, were driven 
from the bridge and saved from capture only by 
the promptness of engineer Lockett in burning 
the bridge behind [them, which he did at great risk 
and just in the nick of time by throwing upon it 
a barrel of turpentine, as soon as the Confederates 
were mostly over. 

The Confederate army was now shut up in 
Vicksburg, and the city was surrounded on the 
land side by Grant's troops, while the river was 
held by the Union navy. Lockett hastened back 
to Vicksburg with full authority from Pemberton 
to put all in the best possible state of defence. The 
troops that had been driven into the city were held 
in reserve in the less exposed parts of the fortifica- 
tion, while fresh troops manned the ramparts upon 
which the first attack must fall should the Union 
army assault the lines. 

The artillery on the land side had been strength- 
ened by bringing from the river bluffs all but the 
heaviest artillery, until there were over a hundred 
guns in position to defend the forts. The front of 
the fortification was strengthened by an " abattis ,: 
or mass of felled trees, with sharpened branches, 

[266] 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

and was also protected by entanglements of tele- 
graph wire to delay the assault. These were made 
by a tangle of wire fastened firmly to stakes driven 
into the ground. 

It was on May 18th that the first soldiers in 
blue were seen advancing on the roads to the east 
of the city. The Confederate pickets were driven 
in, but not until they had made resistance enough 
to allow the main force to withdraw to a safe place 
behind the ramparts. 

The Union troops believed they had before them 
the men whom they had already defeated several 
times and had so easily driven from their intrench- 
ments at Big Black River, and were most eager 
to attack. The next morning, in the hope of an easy 
victory, they rushed forward in force right up to 
the main line of defences, above which not a de- 
fender could be seen until the assailants had come 
within close range. Then, suddenly, so terrific a 
fire was poured upon them that their desperate 
attacks were driven back, though made again and 
again. They at last had to abandon the attack with 
the loss of five stands of colors, of which the color- 
bearers had been shot down. Even repulsed, the 
brave fellows retained an advanced position; but 
they had been entirely convinced they could not 

[267] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

take the fortresses in a first rush, and that there 
was no " scare " in the men who made up the Con- 
federate garrison. 

During the two following days both armies were 
at work, the Confederates building " traverses " — 
that is, embankments running at right angles back 
of their main lines to prevent side fire from reach- 
ing the men in the trenches — and preparing also 
" covered ways " by which they could go from their 
ramparts and trenches to their camp, protected from 
Federal sharpshooters. Many men on both sides 
were shot down by carelessly exposing themselves, 
until, after several days, both armies had learned 
caution and kept under cover. 

On May 22d another attack was attempted, ac- 
companied by a fierce bombardment from the river ; 
but though the Union troops reached the trenches 
three times, and even planted flags upon the para- 
pet itself, they were driven back at every point, 
and though they took one outwork, it was very soon 
retaken by the Confederates. 

This terrible assault left thirty-five hundred men 
between the lines, and was not repeated. By the 
25th it became necessary to remove the dead and 
wounded, and General Pemberton proposed a truce 
for this purpose, which General Grant accepted. 

[268] 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

During this truce Lockett, the engineer, tells of his 
being sent for by General Sherman to receive let- 
ters for residents of Vicksburg, which Sherman had 
undertaken to deliver. The Confederate engineer 
shrewdly suspected that Sherman kept him in con- 
versation in order that he might not have leisure to 
inform himself as to the lines of attack, which the 
bright Confederate engineer admits he was eager 
to do! 

The Union generals had now to give up any hope 
of taking Vicksburg except by a regular scientific 
approach; that is, by digging their trenches in a 
zigzag toward some of the main points of defence. 
These trenches were carried forward under cover 
of the night, and by day were protected by great 
rollers made of timbers packed full of cotton, so as 
to make a rolling breastwork. 

To meet this form of attack, a clever Confederate 
soldier devised the plan of shooting from a big 
musket a fuse filled with cotton soaked in turpen- 
tine. This was shot into the roller, which caught 
fire and was destroyed ; and the Federals, being left 
unprotected, were forced to retire from the head 
of their trench. Yankee ingenuity met this device 
by keeping the cotton soaked with water, and the 
digging of the zigzag trenches was carried on until 

[269] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

they approached close to the works. To protect 
these " saps," in case the Confederates should 
charge out upon them, barrels of powder and 
loaded shells were left in them ready to be lighted 
as the Union sappers were driven out. 

By June 13th these saps had come so near 
that the Confederates began to " countermine " 
their fortifications ; that is, to dig underground gal- 
leries beneath them, which, packed full of powder, 
could be blown up when the Union troops should 
attempt to take possession of the embankments. The 
men at work in these countermines could hear the 
Federal miners at work not far away, but Lockett 
tells us that it was almost impossible to judge dis- 
tances and directions from the sounds heard under- 
ground. 

On June 25th a mine laid by the Union en- 
gineers under one of the strongest points of the 
Confederate works (the Third Louisiana Redan) 
was exploded, making a small breach in the line of 
works. But behind this part of the works another 
redoubt had been built, and vigorous fire defeated 
the Union attack made upon the gap in the walls. 
For the next few days the activities of both sides 
were mainly given to mining, but on the Confeder- 
ate side some of these mines were exploded too 

[270] 



THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

early and did no damage, and others were never 
used at all. 

On June 29th the Union engineers had suc- 
ceeded in carrying their attacking trench forward 
close to the Third Louisiana Redan, where the first 
breach had been made, and were directly under 
the edge of the Confederate embankment. So close 
were they, that the Confederates rolled shells with 
lighted fuses down the front of their defences, and 
thus drove out the attacking force. Then at night 
the Union troops built and placed over their heads 
a great screen of heavy timber, which even the shells 
could not injure. But in the morning, when this was 
discovered, it was soon destroyed by means of a 
barrel containing a hundred and twenty-five pounds 
of gunpowder, which was dropped over the edge 
of the embankment, and blew the timber screen to 
pieces. 

On July 1st another great Union mine con- 
taining tons of gunpowder was exploded, mak- 
ing a breach in the defences fifty feet across and 
twenty feet deep. And in this horrible crater took 
place a most terrific and destructive fight, where 
the two armies came hand to hand, where the 
slightest exposure meant death, and where bravery 
and devotion were too common to be noted. By this 

[271] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

explosion a great breach had been opened even in 
the second line of defence that had been built be- 
hind the rampart where the first breach was made. 
The Confederates tried to fill the opening by pour- 
ing in earth, but the Union fire was so terrific as 
to sweep the dirt away faster than it could be 
thrown in. Sand bags were tried, but these too were 
blown to pieces, and finally the breach was filled 
only by making great bags of waggon covers and 
tent cloths, which, packed with earth, were pushed 
from the side across the opening. 

In these attempts the Confederates lost a hun- 
dred men. This was the last stirring incident of the 
siege, for the Union troops were now at several 
points so close to the Confederate fortifications that 
Pemberton was convinced he could not resist an 
assault; and, indeed, many of the Confederate 
soldiers had told their enemies (to whom, so close 
were the two lines, they could talk freely) that the 
Confederates had almost mutinied because they did 
not believe that successful resistance was longer 
possible. 

Vicksburg was surrendered only when the Union 
lines had come so near that the soldiers could spring 
from their trenches right upon the Confederate 
ramparts, and when by hunger and fatigue the 

[272] 




bJD 
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PC 



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THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG 

defenders were too weak to resist. Many of them 
could do no more than stand in their places and fire 
their muskets. 

The famine in the city had left almost nothing 
to support life, and the Confederates' rations were 
not enough to give them strength. They had yielded 
only to regular siege operations — and an assault 
would have been simply a bloody sacrifice of lives. 

There are only seven years between the siege of 
Vicksburg and that of Paris by the Germans. But 
the defences of Paris were very different from those 
of the Southern city. Paris had always been forti- 
fied, and in addition to the great wall that had been 
kept up since the Middle Ages, it possessed a ring 
of great forts armed with heavy, long-range guns, 
meant to keep an enemy at the distance from its 
inner defences., 

Though, before the French defeats, the arrival 
of the Germans was not expected, yet in the short 
interval given them the French did marvels in pre- 
paring for their defence of the capital; and the 
defence itself was most admirable. Even German 
authorities admit that all was done which was 
possible under the circumstances. Their taking of 
the city was due only to the lack of a trained force 

[273] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

of soldiers in France to come to the relief of the 
long-enduring Parisians, who bravely withstood 
famine and disease, and heroically fought as long 
as there was a possibility that the city would be 
rescued. 



[274] 



THE SIEGE OF PARIS, 1870 

WHEN we come to the taking of Paris, 
in the Franco-Prussian War, we reach 
a time that is in every way modern, 
and yet so rapid have been the changes in the last 
thirty years that in certain respects many of the 
things that seemed remarkable in those days are 
now almost old fashioned. So many inventions were 
made between that time and ours that the warfare 
of to-day makes even the war of 1870 seem any- 
thing but up-to-date. They used the old black gun- 
powder with its heavy smoke instead of smokeless 
powder; their guns were far inferior in force and 
rapidity of fire; they made little use of electricity 
compared to the numberless ways in which it is now 
employed; and certainly upon the side of the 
French the siege showed complete lack of previous 
preparation, owing largely to their surprise at the 
rapid progress of the German army. 

The origin of the war is said by the French his- 
torians of later times to have been due to the desire 
on the part of the emperor to win military glory, 

[275] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

so that his descendants might retain the throne. 
Prussia had been growing in power so rapidly that 
the French were alarmed, and desired to curb her 
strength. The Crown of Spain was offered to a 
young prince of the Hohenzollerns, the royal house 
of Prussia, and though he refused it, France de- 
manded a promise that Prussia would not allow, in 
future, one of her princes on the Spanish throne. 

The despatches telling of the refusal by the King 
of Prussia were deliberately " doctored ,: by Bis- 
marck to bring on war. He believed war must 
come, knew Prussia was ready and France was not, 
and so desired the fight. France declared war, since 
the emperor and the government were told every- 
thing was ready. The French Minister of War de- 
clared, publicly, that " though the war should last 
a year, they would not need to buy even a gaiter- 
button." This was absurdly, disgracefully untrue of 
the French, entirely true of the German prepara- 
tions. 

At a mere skirmish, near Saarbriick, the French 
were victorious, and Napoleon III sent a boastful 
telegram that the Prince Imperial had received 
" his baptism of fire." But as soon as the armies 
came together in serious conflict it was found that 
the German general, Von Moltke, and his staff 

[276] 



THE SIEGE OF PARIS 

knew everything about the French country and 
forces, had complete plans, had brought into the 
field perfectly equipped armies, and could easily 
overwhelm the half-prepared French at every 
point. On the French side everything was wrong, 
confused, unready, and at cross purposes. The only 
thing worthy of praise was the superb bravery of 
the French soldiers, of whom their own statesmen 
then said that they were " lions led by asses "! 

A few of the French officers distinguished them- 
selves, but their fighting was like a football game 
in which " team play " is utterly lacking. Those 
who fought well lost all advantages through lack 
of support. There were throughout' France guns 
without carriages, waggons without horses, troops 
without rifles, officers without maps. 

There is no need to retell the painful struggle 
made by the brave Frenchmen, who simply were 
striving to do the impossible. The Germans won 
every field, and separated the three French armies 
from one another, shutting one into Sedan and 
capturing it with the emperor; another was driven 
into Metz and hopelessly besieged. The only nota- 
ble resistance was made by the Army of the Loire, 
which had some successes at Orleans, but was finally 
overwhelmed by numbers and practically driven 

[277] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

out of the field. In the same way the Army of the 
North also won a few battles, but when heavier 
forces were brought against it, it was forced to re- 
treat, finally passing into Switzerland and laying 
down its arms. 

The war had been declared on July 15th. It was 
at the beginning of September that Napoleon III 
had been captured, and as soon as this news reached 
Paris he was declared deposed and a new govern- 
ment was created — a Republic devoted simply to 
the defence of the fatherland. The great crowd of 
Parisians that flocked into the Place de la Con- 
corde burst into cries of "Vive la Republique ! " 
and before the end of the next day the revolution 
was complete, the empire at an end, and the new 
government at work to prepare the city for the 
siege that all knew must soon follow. 

Orders were given to turn out all German resi- 
dents (for fear of spies), to provision the city with 
flour, herds of cattle, flocks of sheep — every sort of 
supply that could be drawn from the country round 
about. The defences of the forts around the city, 
which occupied detached hills, were put in order, 
bridges over all neighbouring rivers were mined, 
ready to be blown up, or were torn down; all 
houses and woods that might prevent the artillery- 

[278] 



THE SIEGE OF PARIS 

men from seeing the advancing enemy were burned 
to the ground, and even great barricades were 
planned to be placed in the city if the Germans 
should succeed in passing the forts. 

To keep watch for the enemy, a great captive 
balloon was sent high above the city, where it float- 
ed at the end of its long rope. In order to arouse 
the rest of France to the greatest efforts, Gambetta, 
who was the moving spirit of the defence, entered 
a balloon basket, escaped from the city, and suc- 
ceeded in making his way to Tours, where many of 
the authorities in charge of the war were gathered, 
having left Paris as the Germans came dangerously 
near. 

Meanwhile the German armies had been arriv- 
ing, almost unopposed, to within a short distance 
of the city, here and there meeting some momentary 
attempts at resistance, but no organised force of 
any size. By the middle of October, despite several 
sallies which were sharply repulsed, the Germans 
had made their lines about the city a complete ring, 
so that no supplies could reach the capital. 

On October 27th came news of the surrender of 
Metz, containing a hundred and seventy -three thou- 
sand French. This set free for the surer taking of 
Paris two hundred thousand of the best soldiers 

[279] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

of Germany, against whom, inside and outside of 
Paris, could be mustered only almost untrained 
men. 

The French, despite all disadvantages, still 
showed the utmost bravery at times, making, on 
October 30th, a grand attempt to break the Ger- 
man line, in which they say that the bayonets of the 
armies crossed — an occurrence that is very rare in 
modern warfare, having taken place in our own 
Civil War only, it is said, at Spottsylvania and per- 
haps in the storming of one or two forts, like Fort 
Wagner, or in the siege of Port Arthur in 1904. 

After Metz was surrounded, it was seen that only 
the army of Marshal MacMahon could bring help 
to the French. As a last resort the empress directed 
Marshal MacMahon to try a flank attack upon the 
Germans, in the hope of diverting them from their 
advance upon Paris. In speaking of this afterward 
the Germans said that if he had commanded a thor- 
oughly prepared army the policy might have been 
a wise one; but with his half -trained soldiers, the 
attempt resulted only in MacMahon's being driven 
back to Sedan, where he was later forced to surren- 
der eighty thousand men. 

In a little over two weeks from the time the Ger- 
mans had first arrived around Paris the serious 

[280] 



THE SIEGE OF PARIS 

siege began. Toward the end of September an at- 
tempt had been made to enrol in the French army 
of defence every citizen from the age of twenty to 
forty. But although this undoubtedly raised troops 
who were patriotic, brave, and devoted, they were 
untrained and had nothing of the steadiness of 
veterans. 

Meanwhile Paris, unprepared for the siege, suf- 
fered from every sort of privation. One by one, first 
luxuries and then necessities began to fail. Not only 
was the city compelled to provide for its own citi- 
zens, but from miles around the country people had 
been coming in daily up to the very arrival of 
the German army to take refuge within its walls, 
bringing their few household goods in the hope of 
saving them from the German invaders. Food rose 
rapidly in price, and when ordinary kinds of meat 
failed, every eatable animal was resorted to for 
butcher's meat. In the markets not only was horse 
meat commonly seen, but that of mules, dogs, cats, 
and rats; and by the slaughter of the animals in 
the zoological garden, the meat of elephants, lions, 
tigers, and every sort of beast, was brought to mar- 
ket and eagerly bought by the starving Parisians. 
Many books have been written concerning the inci- 
dents, the miseries and the humours of the siege. 

[281 ] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Communication with the outside world was kept 
up by despatching balloons, over ninety of which 
left the city, and nearly all reached the outside 
world in safety. Carrier pigeons also were used to 
convey messages that had been photographed to 
microscopic size, printed upon the thinnest paper, 
thrust into quills, and attached under the birds' 
wings. 

The winter proved intensely cold. When ordi- 
nary fuel failed, everything burnable was soon used 
up to keep the inhabitants from freezing. Almost no 
news reached the city from outside, and what little 
came was discouraging. 

The Germans at first remained satisfied to keep 
their strong lines unbroken, knowing that they had 
plenty of troops to meet and defeat the few armies 
that could be raised in France for the purpose of 
relieving the beleaguered city, and yet could easily 
overwhelm any sortie made by the Parisians. 

There was not much military skill shown in these 
French attacks, though there was plenty of des- 
perate bravery. In the journals of the German staff 
we read that it was easy to know when an attack 
was preparing against the German lines, for a 
battle flag was hoisted near the French forts where 
the troops were gathering for the assault. Thus the 

[282] 



THE SIEGE OP PARIS 

forewarned Germans had ample time to bring a 
strong force to any threatened point. 

When the French had determined to risk all 
upon one last attempt to break through the Ger- 
man forces, they went about its preparation so 
openly that the German officers could see the troops 
marching to the points appointed; and, from the 
German Emperor down, the leaders placed them- 
selves where they could not only see every move- 
ment, but could direct the placing of the German 
forces to meet the attack. Consequently when the 
French came out, they were met by so deadly a fire 
that their desperate charges did not carry them 
even to the first line of the German armies ; and the 
French reserves were thrown into disorder by the 
artillery of the Germans, which had been so placed 
as to destroy them even before they could reach the 
field of actual fighting. 

For three or four hours the hopeless struggle was 
renewed; but though a few places of small impor- 
tance were captured and held for a short time, by 
nine o'clock that night the attempt of the French 
to break through had ended in a defeat so complete 
that in the morning there was no spirit to make 
a second attack. 

The Germans had not wished to bombard the 

[283] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

city. They believed that when the French saw re- 
sistance to be entirely hopeless surrender would 
follow. But although all attempts to break through 
the German lines had failed, the French pride re- 
fused to surrender, and deluded itself with wild 
dreams of outside interference or impossible suc- 
cesses by the provincial armies, and refused even 
to ask terms. It was only when the city was within 
two weeks of the end of its food supply, and when 
the last sortie had failed, that Paris was willing to 
talk of capitulating. On January 28, 1871, terms 
were made whereby France gave up Alsace and 
Lorraine, a thousand millions of dollars, and agreed 
that the Germans should hold the city for forty- 
eight hours. Thus ended the siege, and at once Eng- 
land, Germany, and France united in sending food 
to the starving people. 

The lesson to be drawn from the siege of Paris 
has been pointed out by the German comments. 
It is the certainty that untrained men, no matter 
how brave and intelligent, and willing to lay down 
their lives in desperate fighting, cannot hold their 
own against even inferior numbers of trained sol- 
diers directed by intelligent, instructed officers. 
The French were mere amateurs playing the game 

[284] 



THE SIEGE OF PARIS 

of war against professionals. Paris was really taken 
by blockade rather than by a siege. It was a starved 
city that surrendered to the German armies, for 
none of the great fortresses were taken or needed 
to be taken. The Germans merely made their circle 
of soldiers and kept it unbroken until famine forced 
the surrender. 

And now we come to our own times. Though 
there were some notable small sieges between that 
of Paris and that of Port Arthur, none of them 
give us any new point of view. But at Port Arthur 
were used new weapons, new artillery, the tele- 
phone, search lights, modern warships, torpedoes — 
all the modern improvements in war. The strong- 
hold was prepared by five years of skilled work 
of great Russian engineers, and no money was 
spared to make the forts able to resist any force 
that could be brought against them. 

They were placed on lofty ranges of hills, were 
provided with bomb-proof trenches, protected with 
steel plates, with deep ditches, with concrete walls, 
and were strengthened with wire entanglements 
charged with strong electric currents. And yet, 
despite machine guns that sent rains of bullets, of 
strong garrisons having ample supplies of ammu- 
nition for their quick-firing magazine rifles, of 

[285] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

great search lights, of rockets and bombs that 
turned night into day, these forts were taken one by 
one, and at length Port Arthur was surrendered 
to Japan. 

The story cannot be told at length, but we must 
at least note the most important features of this — 
the most modern of great sieges. 



[286] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR, 1904 

PORT ARTHUR is a fine harbour on the 
southeast coast of Manchuria, just opposite 
Corea and Japan. It is situated in a long 
peninsula, at the end of which is a protected port 
for vessels, the entrance being a narrow strait less 
than a quarter of a mile wide. The peninsula ends 
in a great circle of hills surrounding the town 
and harbour, making the place a wonderfully good 
fort when properly supplied with artillery and for- 
tified in modern ways. 

The trouble over the possession of this harbour — 
the key to Corea — began between the Chinese and 
Japanese; and in a war between these two races 
Port Arthur was taken without great difficulty by 
Japan. When they came to make up terms of peace, 
Russia, Germany, and France insisted that Japan 
should give up Port Arthur. Japan surrendered 
her capture — and a hundred Japanese committed 
hara-kiri in solemn protest against her withdrawal. 
Then, by an agreement, Russia secured it for a few 
years, promising to give it up. 

[287] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

When Russia took Port Arthur, it became the 
end of her great Trans-Siberian Railway, and she 
spent, it is said, three hundred millions in improv- 
ing and strengthening the place, so that it might 
serve as a harbour open all winter — something 
Russia has eagerly sought for many years. 

As the time came for Russia to withdraw, it was 
plain that she did not mean to keep her agreement. 
Japan, knowing that this fortified place occupied 
by a Russian fleet would put her in constant dan- 
ger, insisted upon the withdrawal, and when certain 
that Russia would not go, waged a war to drive the 
Russians out of Manchuria. 

As soon as war was sure, the Japanese began to 
land troops in Corea and sent a fleet to Port Ar- 
thur to keep the Russian warships from going out. 
February 7th the Russians marched into Corean 
territory. On the night of February 8th, without 
warning, three deadly explosions were heard in the 
harbour of Port Arthur at about half -past eleven, 
followed by a roar of guns which lasted until three 
in the morning. Dawn showed that two battleships 
and a cruiser had been destroyed while their Rus- 
sian crews were unsuspicious that the enemy was 
near. On the same night two other Russian vessels 
were forced to come out and fight fourteen Japa- 

[288] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

nese warships at the mouth of the Corean harbour, 
Chemulpo. They were shot to pieces, retreated, and 
were destroyed by their own commanders. 

Japan thus, at the beginning, had control of the 
sea, and was able to land her forces in Manchuria 
long before the Russians could bring a sufficient 
force to meet them. 

The Japanese numbered two hundred thousand, 
with an even larger reserve army in Japan, while 
the Russians at the beginning had at the seat of 
war about a hundred and sixty thousand. Every 
attempt of the Russian fleet to escape from the 
harbour was defeated, and the Japanese tried again 
and again to sink vessels across the narrow strait. 
After two vain attempts they were partly success- 
ful on May 3d. In this last enterprise eight Japa- 
nese vessels were sunk across the harbour entrance, 
while their devoted crews went down with them, 
cheering and firing upon the Russians even as they 
sank. 

On April 13th the Russian vessels had attacked 
the Japanese, but after losing their flagship, the 
Petropaulovsk, were forced to retire. On August 
10th an attempt to break out, and to reach their 
own port, Vladivostok, met with even greater dis- 
aster — three of the Russians being sunk. There 

[289] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

were countless floating and sunken mines in the 
waters, and they did much damage, not only to the 
Japanese, who lost two battleships and three cruis- 
ers, but to the Russians' own vessels. Consequently 
the naval forces at Port Arthur were simply at a 
standstill, and the Japanese armies were free to 
carry out their work without fear of a Russian 
force being landed. 

The Japanese armies, once landed, took the town 
of Dalny, a few miles from Port Arthur, and by 
sharp fighting drove the Russian troops into Port 
Arthur, at the same time surrounding the town 
so as to prevent help coming to the garrison. By 
September 4th Port Arthur was left to itself, be- 
sieged by eighty thousand Japanese, without hope 
of aid from outside — the only army within reach 
having been beaten or driven away about the 
middle of June. 

The forts around the town were of stone and of 
cement, of enormous strength, fully supplied with 
heavy guns and ammunition. In addition to the 
main forts which crowned the highest hills there 
were, upon lower hills all around them, positions 
nearly as strong, forming a ring of fire without a 
weak point which the Japanese could take except 
by great losses. 

[290] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

Sure that no army from the outside could reach 
them for many weeks, the Japanese picked out 
their ground and began a series of attacks that 
gradually showed them which points of the Rus- 
sian line were strongest, and what was the range 
of the Russian guns. The attacks were made by day 
and by night, but the night attacks showed that the 
Russians were fully provided with nine or more 
great electric searchlights, which, mounted on the 
heights, threw their clear light continually here and 
there over all the surrounding country. Whenever 
the moving light brought to view bodies of Japa- 
nese, instantly telephone signals were sent to the 
Russian gunners and a heavy fire followed upon 
the forces the searchlights had discovered. 

Whenever the companies of Japanese made their 
way near to the lines of forts, there would arise 
from the Russian batteries a great volley of star- 
bombs and rockets. These were prepared so that 
when they burst in the air they broke into masses 
of slowly falling stars, which, as Villiers, the war 
correspondent, writes, were bright enough to make 
the moonlight look gray. Consequently, the night 
attacks became nearly as costly as those made in 
broad daylight. So many were the forts, and so fre- 
quent the attacks made upon them during August 

[291 ] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

and September, that it is impossible to give here 
even a list of them. 

The attacks would be watched by the Japanese 
from their own lines of batteries, and were vigor- 
ously supported by artillery fire. The earliest at- 
tacks during these months were made by small 
bodies spread wide over the slopes, but these showed 
that it was impossible for the bravest troops to live 
under the fire of the machine guns, which poured 
their shot in a thick rain upon everything that came 
within range. 

The only way by which these assaulting parties 
succeeded in taking the forts was by making rushes 
up the hills from one depression in the ground to 
another, sheltering themselves often in the pits left 
by the explosion of their own shells. But, in spite 
of their bravery (and Villiers says that the Japanese 
never retired) , sometimes only a tenth of the attack- 
ing party succeeded in getting so near the forts 
that they were below the guns and protected in the 
deep ditches. 

One such assaulting party, after reaching the 
ditch, were compelled to spend all day in its deep 
water, under the burning sun, surrounded by their 
own dead, and without hope of support by their 
own forces. This party, like most of the Japanese 

[292] 




Copyright, 1905, by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
Japanese 11-inch Siege Gun Firing on Port Arthur 




Copyright, 1905, by Undemoood <fc Underwood, N. Y 
A Charge of Japanese Infantry under Fire 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

attackers, had with them hand-bombs loaded with 
dynamite; and late that day a brave sergeant stole 
to the embrasure, or opening, in which was a ma- 
chine gun and destroyed it by throwing in an ex- 
plosive bomb. Others imitated him; the fire at that 
point was checked, and the reserves came up. The 
Japanese then dashed into the fort and captured 
it, much of the hand-to-hand fighting being done 
with the explosive hand-grenades, or dynamite 
bombs. 

Another fort was upon a lofty rock which rose 
six hundred feet above the plain and enabled the 
Russians to see the advance of the different Japa- 
nese columns. Up this great rock the little Japanese 
crawled, and took it, after a terrible fight with its 
brave defenders. 

The whole Japanese line of embankments and 
batteries was connected by telephone lines, the sta- 
tions being in bomb-proof shelters close to the gen- 
erals' quarters. Having command of the sea, the 
Japanese were constantly landing additional forces 
and bringing over artillery and plentiful supplies, 
while the Russian armies had to depend upon the 
great Trans-Siberian Railway, a single track road 
thousands of miles in length. 

The Japanese recruits, as soon as they arrived, 

[293] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

were trained in camps for the work of assaulting 
the forts, being taught by sham fights and by 
lectures from their officers just how to protect 
themselves in advancing on the forts and in fight- 
ing the Russian garrisons. 

A story told by Villiers in his book on the siege 
gives a good idea of the devotion of the Japanese 
soldiers. General Nogi, the Japanese commander, 
told him that the few survivors of that attack 
wherein the sergeant had destroyed the machine 
guns, were being kept in camp expecting to be sent 
again to the front. Nogi, however, said that they 
had done enough, and would be sent home safely; 
but that he feared they would commit suicide if 
they knew this. General Nogi also told the same 
correspondent of his great admiration for General 
Stoessel, the Russian commander, who, he thought, 
had shown superb skill and splendid generalship 
throughout the defence. 

So constant was the fire by day and by night that 
the Russian garrison were in a constant state of 
racked nerves. At the slightest sign of activity on 
the Japanese line a storm of shot and shell from 
the Russians was sure to follow. This constant pres- 
sure upon the lines, with the occasional taking of 
an advanced position, lasted until October, and yet 

[294] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

no position of great importance had been captured, 
despite the most desperate efforts. 

The main object of the Japanese army was to 
get possession of a certain fort upon the most com- 
manding height of all, which would enable them to 
place guns where they would be able to shell not 
only the town of Port Arthur, with its arsenals 
and magazines, but, especially, to destroy the Rus- 
sian fleet where it lay imprisoned in the harbour. 
But it was first necessary to take the lesser heights 
that protected this great Wangtai fort. 

Some of these were taken by assault, in which 
the Japanese used at least two methods new in that 
kind of warfare. As they charged upon the Russian 
ramparts, they brought up behind their own lines 
light bamboo mortars, wound tightly with ropes 
or bamboo fibres to make them strong enough to 
carry a light charge. This sort of light artillery 
was their own invention. Two men could carry a 
bamboo gun forward as fast as the assaulting com- 
panies advanced, and being loaded lightly, it would 
throw its missiles in a curve over the heads of their 
own men to fall among the Russians. But to this in- 
vention they had added another. Instead of firing 
explosive shells, they fired from these mortars light 
masses of burning gun-cotton, which, while it did 

[295] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

less damage than shells, on the other hand, by its 
blinding light and burning flakes, threw the de- 
fenders into disorder and prevented them from fir- 
ing effectively. Before making an assault, the wire 
entanglements were destroyed by means of explo- 
sive bombs pushed forward at the end of long 
bamboo poles. 

Those who were wounded in these terrible as- 
saults had to lie all day where they fell. Even the 
devoted Red Cross hospital attendants would have 
met certain death if they had tried to rescue them. 
Consequently, searching parties set out by night, 
and whenever the moving searchlight came near 
them, they would fall to the ground, pretending to 
be the dead, and so remain until the light had passed 
on. Thus the rescue of the wounded was nearly as 
dangerous as attacking the ramparts. 

Among the inventions used in modern sieges 
and employed by the Japanese during the siege at 
Port Arthur, is the hyposcope, a sort of telescope 
so arranged with mirrors that the observer sits 
safely behind an embankment while the hyposcope 
is bent so as to give him a view over the breastwork 
in front. The enemy's fire may destroy the instru- 
ment, but the observer is out of range. Protected 
by the embankment, he can give directions for the 

[296] 




Copyright, 1905, by Underwood & Underwood, X. Y. 

General Baron Nogi, Commander of the Japanese Forces before 

Port Arthur 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

firing of the guns. He is connected by telephone 
with the batteries, which may be (as they were at 
Port Arthur) far in the rear, and even on the other 
side of lofty hills from which their fire is deliv- 
ered according to the directions given by the ad- 
vanced officers. 

DBy October 7th the Japanese had taken the outer 
ring of forts, but had convinced themselves that 
it would be impossible to take the stronger forts 
by means of direct attacks. They consequently de- 
cided to begin the regular digging of parallels and 
trenches against the most important of the Russian 
strongholds. These methods, of course, they had 
used to some extent before, but now they resolved 
to depend upon them. Brave as the Japanese sol- 
diers had been, their losses had been enormous, and 
they met in the Russian soldiers perhaps less clever- 
ness, but certainly equal bravery in the hand-to- 
hand struggles. Some of the outlying forts had 
been taken and retaken four or five times. Thus it 
is told that in an attack on one of the three strong- 
est forts, the Japanese made their way even to the 
very ditch, but found this was forty-five feet deep 
and fifty feet wide, and that their scaling ladders 
were too short for climbing the farther side. In 
repelling this assault at one time a company of 

[297] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

Russians, despite the terrific fire, took their position 
standing out clearly on the ramparts, and sent their 
volleys at the word of command as steadily as if 
upon parade. This bravery was cheered, even by 
their enemies. 

It is said that against the Japanese attacks the 
Russians sometimes used torpedoes taken from their 
warships, launching them down hill against the 
ascending Japanese troops. 

The English correspondent, Villiers, early in 
November, gave up his accounts of the siege, giv- 
ing as his reason that he had already written an 
account of each various method of attack, and that 
what remained was merely a repetition of the same 
things on a larger scale. 

Digging their great trenches parallel to the 
mountain fortress, and by night carrying forward 
the saps, or trenches, toward the fort, the Japanese 
had approached, by the middle of December, near 
to the two strong forts that alone remained untaken 
of all those defending the approaches to the chief 
stronghold. These two forts that still held out were 
known as the East and West Uhrlung, which is 
translated " Double dragon," the name being 
Chinese. 

The East Uhrlung fort had been dug out on the 

[298] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

crest of a hill in two stories, the upper one contain- 
ing the heavy guns for distant firing, the lower 
story the machine guns and the riflemen, ready to 
rain shot upon the assaulting columns. The Japa- 
nese, from their nearest parallels, had succeeded 
by the end of December in carrying their tunnels 
beneath this fortress, and had dug out five mines 
and filled them with dynamite and gun-cotton. 

On the 28th a strong force of four battalions was 
sent forward to lie in the trenches ready to attack 
as soon as the mines should be exploded. At ten 
o'clock in the morning the five mines were set off, 
one after the other, so quickly that there seemed 
to be one long detonation. A tremendous mass of 
black smoke sprang upward, and immediately the 
Japanese rushed forward to drive out the few of 
the garrison who escaped the explosion. 

As soon as the Japanese had appeared on the 
ground in front of the fort they were met by so 
heavy a fire that nearly the whole force was swept 
away. A stronger attacking party followed, and 
after a long fight, advancing slowly under cover, 
succeeded in reaching the crest of the hill and dig- 
ging intrenchments beyond the moat of the fort. 
But before they could take the position, of which 
the explosion had left only the rear walls standing, 

[299] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

they had to bring up artillery, one mounted cannon 
and several magazine guns. With these they suc- 
ceeded in driving out the garrison, who, however, 
took refuge in their barracks built of concrete at the 
rear of the fort. In the evening the Japanese at- 
tacked these barracks with their dynamite hand- 
grenades, and finally drove the defenders out. But 
these brave Russians, before they retired, poured 
petroleum over the place and left it in flames. 

In this fight two hundred of the garrison were 
killed in the explosion, two hundred in the later at- 
tacks, and two hundred more made their escape. 
The Japanese lost a thousand killed and wounded. 

But after this victory there remained only one of 
the supporting forts. 

This second Uhrlung fort had also been under- 
mined, though to advance to the fort and to carry 
mines forward had cost months of work and heavy 
losses in lives. Again and again the path of the 
mine had to be changed to avoid the Russian coun- 
termines. But two days after the taking of the East 
Uhrlung fort all was ready for the blowing up 
of its western companion. 

On the last day of the year 1904 two battalions 
of the Japanese being ready for the assault, two 
mines were set off at 10 a.m., and the explosion of 

[300] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

these was followed by an even more fearful detona- 
tion. As soon as the ruins were clear of smoke, the 
Japanese rushed forward, one toward the front, 
the other toward the rear of the fortress, or, rather, 
of the crater where the fortress had been. They met 
with absolutely no resistance. Not a Russian was to 
be seen. But after a little delay a white flag was 
thrust out from the ruins of the great barracks of 
the fort, and it was found that one hundred and 
fifty-nine of the garrison had been entombed in this 
ruin by the explosion of the Japanese mines and 
by that of the fort's magazine, which had followed. 
In order to extricate these men the Japanese had to 
send their own engineers, who with dynamite blew 
an opening through which they rescued the Rus- 
sians. Thus fell the second of the outlying de- 
fences of the great Wangtai fort. 

The Japanese had already advanced close to 
this last stronghold, and had even succeeded in 
mining the trenches in front of it, at the foot of the 
hill whose crest it occupied. These were blown up 
and occupied by a party of Japanese on the same 
day that saw the taking of the second Uhrlung 
fort. 

On the first day of 1905, shortly after nine o'clock, 
two strong bodies of Japanese were gathered at the 

[301 ] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

foot of the hill leading up to Wangtai. Many heavy 
guns had been brought to bear, and now these 
opened, sending showers of shot and shell against 
the stronghold in order to prepare for the Japanese 
advance by dismounting guns, breaking the nerve 
of the garrison, and, if possible, breaching the 
walls. 

A fine account of the attack on these last three 
forts is given by the war correspondent, W. Rich- 
mond Smith, in his book, " The Siege and Fall of 
Port Arthur." 

In speaking of this final assault, he says: 

The fight was a splendid one to see. 

From the time the advance began the assaulters were 
in plain view, their dark uniforms and glittering bayonets 
showing up against the lighter background of the steep 
hill slope. Like swarms of ants the black bunches of men 
worked slowly upward in the direction of the battery 
position upon the crest, which all the time resembled the 
crater of an active volcano, from bursting shrapnel and 
heavier shells. Many wonderful sights this siege had af- 
forded, but this last scene in the last act of the great 
drama was more fascinating than anything which had 
preceded it. 

The very manner in which those Japanese soldiers 
wormed their way inch by inch toward the crest, dying as 
they crawled, told the observer even that if all other at- 
tacks had failed, were almost bound to fail, this one was 

[302 ] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

just as sure to succeed. Nothing short of absolute an- 
nihilation could have stopped those men at that time in 
their slow upward climb, for the end, the very last of the 
awful siege, lay at the top. And when it did come it was 
superb, that end. 

Only a short twenty yards separated the leaders of 
the nearest bunch of men from the goal. It was then about 
3.30 o'clock in the afternoon. Half an hour was spent in 
the exchange of dynamite hand grenades between the as- 
saulters and the garrison. Suddenly a Japanese officer 
rose from his crawling attitude, waved his sword high in 
the air, and made straight for the crest. He was followed 
closely by twenty or thirty men. With " Banzais ! " that 
could be heard for miles the crawling hundreds rose to 
their feet and went to the crest like a whirlwind. In the 
midst of it all there was a loud explosion. The Russians 
in retiring had fired a mine under the battery position, but 
it was timed too soon and did no serious damage. Nor did 
it stop the assaulters for a second. Through the smoke 
and dust they went, and Wangtai was theirs at last. 

The possession of this hill meant not only the 
destruction of Port Arthur, but of its supplies, of 
all the other forts and the Russian vessels that re- 
mained in the harbour. Further resistance would 
have been mere slaughter, and the negotiations for 
surrendering of the stronghold at once began, 
final terms being signed on January 2d. During 
the siege the loss of the Russians exceeded fifty 

[303] 



THE BOOK OF FAMOUS SIEGES 

thousand, including two generals killed and four 
wounded out of ten. The Japanese loss was even 
greater, but they deny that there was any unneces- 
sary sacrifice of the soldiers' lives. Stoessel, the 
Russian commander, declared that he had fourteen 
thousand sick in hospital, that the garrison suffered 
terribly from scurvy, and that the surrender was 
necessary as soon as the Japanese had their great 
eleven-inch guns placed to command the town, 
their shells causing widespread destruction. 

This account of the siege of Port Arthur does 
not, of course, speak of the taking of even the more 
important points before these last three attacks. 
The object has been to show the use of modern 
methods in detecting and resisting attacks, and 
also to point out that, against modern artillery 
and small arms, the only sure method of taking a 
stronghold is by the slow, regular approach in 
trenches, followed by mining and the blowing up 
of walls. 

Mr. Richmond Smith closes his account of the 
taking of Wangtai by the suggestion that possibly 
the world will never see another siege wherein 
these methods are used, his idea being that attack 
by airships dropping explosives will take the place 
of mining. But it may be that the coming of air- 

[304] 



THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR 

ships into warfare will result only in sending de- 
fenders more deeply under ground. 

The art of besieging has now been followed from 
its first form, the mere rush of an armed mob, to 
the most modern forms of all attacks, wherein the 
telephone, searchlight, modern explosives, and sci- 
entific mining are used so skilfully as to insure, 
in time, the fall of any unsupported fortress. 

It only remains for modern science to discover 
a means for avoiding warfare entirely. No one 
doubts it is a most wasteful, cruel, and wicked 
means of settling disputes. But — the way to put an 
end to warfare remains to be discovered, and mean- 
while it is the duty of nations to prepare for war 
until peace is sure never to be broken. 



THE END 



[305] 



